While local competitors soared, Apple’s numbers dropped 9% compared to the same period last year — down to 9.8 million units.

This is the seventh consecutive quarter Apple has seen its shipment volume shrink in China. For a company that once shaped global tech culture, that’s a worrying trend.

At the heart of the issue? Pricing. Apple is sticking to its high-end strategy, but that playbook isn’t working anymore — at least not in China.

A new wave of government subsidies, rolled out in January, is giving Chinese consumers a 15% rebate on devices priced below 6,000 yuan (about $820). Most iPhones don’t qualify. But brands like Xiaomi do, and they’re cashing in.

Xiaomi shipped 13.3 million phones — a 40% jump from the same time last year. That puts it comfortably ahead of Apple in market share, as more Chinese buyers choose value over brand prestige.

“The subsidy scheme is clearly designed to boost domestic consumption, but it’s also giving Chinese brands a strong edge,” said IDC analyst Will Wong. “Apple’s premium pricing structure has prevented the U.S. company from capitalising on new government subsidies.”

Overall, China’s smartphone market grew by 3.3% in Q1. So while the pie got bigger, Apple’s slice got smaller. Its market share now sits at 13.7%, down from 17.4% in the previous quarter — a sharp drop in such a competitive space.

Now, to be fair, Apple isn’t doing badly in shipments everywhere. Globally, it shipped 57.9 million phones in Q1 — its best first-quarter performance ever, with a 10% increase year-on-year.

But China isn’t just another market. It’s the world’s largest consumer electronics battlefield, and losing ground here sends a strong signal.

Chinese consumers are changing. They’re more price-sensitive, more nationalistic, and less dazzled by the Apple logo. And with brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo offering sleek design and solid performance at lower prices — backed now by government support — Apple’s old charm isn’t quite cutting it.

The company has a decision to make. Stick to its high-margin strategy and risk further erosion in one of its most important markets? Or rethink its approach to pricing and product positioning in China?

Anyways, this is beyond being one bad quarter. It’s about whether Apple can still compete in a market that’s no longer waiting to be impressed.

According to the report,

“Infobip is a key player in the CPaaS market with a global footprint and strong capabilities underpinned by its broad portfolio for enterprises as well as a carrier-grade service offering.”

Courtney Munroe, research vice president, Worldwide Telecommunications Research at IDC, said:

“Infobip has an agile organization structure and appetite for innovation to meet evolving enterprise requirements that stimulates continued expansion of its capabilities and global presence. The firm’s strong breadth and depth of services has enabled it to grow rapidly while maintaining a strong financial position.”

Silvio Kutić, CEO at Infobip, said:

“Over the last year, Infobip has continued to invest in innovative new services. For instance, our AI Hub and RCS Business Messaging Solution enable businesses and brands to provide instant, personalized responses and deliver exceptional conversational experiences for their customers. We believe our recognition by the IDC MarketScape as a Leader in the CPaaS market for the third time reflects our commitment to helping businesses transform their customer relationships, increase loyalty, and grow.”

Source: IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Communications Platform as a Service (CPaaS) 2025 Vendor Assessment

Apple led the market with 12.6 million units shipped, capturing a 31.7% share. While Apple saw only 1.4% growth in shipments, its market share slipped from 37.7% in the same quarter last year, which was due to reduced consumer demand.

Samsung followed in second place, shipping 7.1 million units for a 17.9% market share. The company experienced an 18.3% growth in shipments over the last year, driven largely by the popularity of its budget Galaxy Tab A9 series. However, its market share decreased slightly from the previous 18.2%.

Amazon recorded the highest growth rate among the top players, with 111.3% year-over-year increase, reaching 4.6 million units. 

This surge pushed Amazon’s market share to 11.6%, up from 6.6% last year. Prime Day promotions were a major contributor to this success, boosting demand for Amazon’s tablet lineup.

Huawei also posted strong gains, recording a 44.1% growth rate and 3.3 million shipments, increasing its market share to 8.2%. The company’s affordable MatePad SE 11 proved popular in emerging markets, bolstering Huawei’s standing.

Rounding out the top five, Lenovo shipped 3 million units, capturing a 7.6% market share and seeing a 14.7% year-over-year growth. 

Lenovo’s sales improved particularly in China and Western Europe, but the company’s share declined slightly from last year’s 8.0%.

Other tablet brands collectively accounted for 9.1 million shipments, representing a 22.9% market share and a steady demand for alternative devices. 

The holiday season is approaching, and this is a good time for tablet makers to boost sales, with a focus on new model releases and promotional events to capture further consumer interest.

The survey, conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), also found notable differences in expectations across geographic regions.

While tech buyers in North America identified financial and operational systems as the business area most likely to be affected by GenAI, their counterparts in Western Europe indicated that IT and line of business (LOB) technology decision making will see the most impact.

In Asia/Pacific, survey respondents felt GenAI would affect customer engagement, experience, and support the most.

“What the survey results confirm is that the application of GenAI across business functions will be broad and its impact will span a wide range of competitive and business model areas,” said Matt Acaro, research director for Computer Vision AI Tools and Technology at IDC. “Another thing the results highlight is that GenAI’s ability to process, understand, and derive value from a wide range of data sources is its real superpower. It is exactly this capability that enables GenAI models and applications to be integrated and used within so many different business and customer processes and workflows. As organizations gain more experience with GenAI technologies, we expect them to use what they have learned to deploy GenAI in new areas.”

In addition to the three business areas identified as most likely to be impacted by GenAI, the survey included four other business areas for consideration: customer acquisition and sales; product design and development; data-driven decision making; and talent and staffing.

Customer acquisition and sales and talent and staffing were the two business areas considered least likely to be impacted by GenAI.

The IDC Survey Spotlight, Where Do Technology Buyers Anticipate GenAI to Have the Greatest Competitive Positioning and Business Model Impact? (Doc #US52378424), examines where technology buyers anticipate GenAI to have the greatest impact on their competitive positioning and business models.

The results are based on data from IDC’s Future Enterprise Resiliency and Spending Survey, Wave 4, which was fielded in April 2024 and included 622 self-identified industry respondents.

Converting GenAI’s potential into practical use cases that generate business value requires a clear-eyed understanding of AI’s current limitations and challenges.

This data, revealed by IDC’s recent Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker, shows that the tablet shipment market is taking a good turn following a prolonged period of stagnation.

After the slowdown, the global tablet market experienced a marginal resurgence in the first quarter of 2024, with shipments totaling 30.8 million units, a fair increase from the previous year. 

This rebound, as noted by IDC analysts, is attributed to the commencement of a refresh cycle within the industry, driven by consumer demand for productivity-oriented devices amidst ongoing macroeconomic challenges.

Despite facing economic struggles and a lack of new product launches, Apple maintained its leading position in the tablet market, shipping 9.9 million units in Q1 2024. 

While this represents an 8.5% decline year-over-year, Apple remains ready for growth with anticipated new product releases in the second quarter of 2024.

Samsung, securing the second position, shipped 6.7 million units in 1Q24, a decline of 5.8% compared to the previous year. The company is focusing on enhancing user experience through AI integration and premium product offerings to capitalize on the upcoming replacement cycle.

Huawei retained its third-place position, exhibiting commendable year-over-year growth of 43.6%, shipping 2.9 million units in Q1 2024. Leveraging the resurgence of its smartphone business, Huawei expanded its market share and continues to strengthen its presence in the tablet market.

Lenovo and Xiaomi secured the fourth and fifth positions, respectively. Lenovo achieved a year-over-year growth of 13.2%, driven by the success of its detachable portfolio, while Xiaomi experienced growth of 92.6%, primarily driven by strong performance in its largest market, China.

Anuroopa Nataraj, senior research analyst at IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers, pointed to the signs of recovery observed in the tablet market during the first quarter of 2024. 

Nataraj emphasized that sustained growth will hinge on upcoming refresh cycles and increased adoption of tablets in commercial segments, particularly in education and the gig economy.

Despite the positive growth, there are still challenges within the tablet market, including intensifying competition from PCs and smartphones. 

However, Nataraj highlighted potential growth opportunities driven by advancements in AI capabilities, mirroring trends observed across other device categories.

The tablet market’s growth in the first quarter of 2024 is a fair turnaround following a protracted period of decline. The tech companies’ resilience even with the challenging economic conditions, coupled with innovative strategies from leading competitors, reiterates the dynamism of the tablet industry. 

Individuals are moving towards premium tablets and emerging technologies like AI will help boost this market, presenting both challenges and opportunities for industry players.

The IDC tracker shows global smartphone shipments increased 7.8% year over year to 289.4 million units in the first quarter of 2024 (1Q24).

While the industry is not completely out of the woods, as macroeconomic challenges remain in many markets, this marks the third consecutive quarter of shipment growth, a strong indicator that a recovery is well underway.

“As expected, smartphone recovery continues to move forward with market optimism slowly building among the top brands,” said Ryan Reith, group vice president with IDC’s Worldwide Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. “While Apple managed to capture the top spot at the end of 2023, Samsung successfully reasserted itself as the leading smartphone provider in the first quarter. While IDC expects these two companies to maintain their hold on the high end of the market, the resurgence of Huawei in China, as well as notable gains from Xiaomi, Transsion, OPPO/OnePlus, and vivo will likely have both OEMs looking for areas to expand and diversify. As the recovery progresses, we’re likely to see the top companies gain share as the smaller brands struggle for positioning.”

“The smartphone market is emerging from the turbulence of the last two years both stronger and changed,” said Nabila Popal, research director with IDC’s Worldwide Tracker team. “Firstly, we continue to see growth in value and average selling prices (ASPs) as consumers opt for more expensive devices knowing they will hold onto their devices longer. Secondly, there is a shift in power among the Top 5 companies, which will likely continue as market players adjust their strategies in a post-recovery world. Xiaomi is coming back strong from the large declines experienced over the past two years and Transsion is becoming a stable presence in the Top 5 with aggressive growth in international markets. In contrast, while the Top 2 players both saw negative growth in the first quarter, it seems Samsung is in a stronger position overall than they were in recent quarters.”

Top 5 Companies, Worldwide Smartphone Shipments, Market Share, and Year-Over-Year Growth, Q1 2024 (Preliminary results, shipments in millions of units)

Sophos Endpoint defends more than 300,000 organizations worldwide against advanced attacks with anti-ransomware, anti-exploitation, behavioural analysis, and other technologies that stop threats before they escalate.

In the report, IDC applauds Sophos Endpoint for including “a more expansive set of protection technologies (host-based firewall and IDS/IPS, device control, DLP, and encryption) as standard features in its endpoint security offering.”

In addition, “in the discipline of systematically strengthening customers’ security posture, Sophos has a strong set of features in customer security advisory recently enhanced with an account health-checking feature (detecting and remediating security configuration drift).”

The report also praises Sophos for adding “several new capabilities: adaptive attack protection, critical attack warning and data protection and recovery” to further mitigate risks.

With an extensive and expanding range of integrated capabilities spanning protection, detection, response, and recovery, Sophos Endpoint seamlessly integrates with other vendors’ and Sophos products including Sophos Managed Detection and Response (MDR), the most widely used MDR offering.

Sophos Endpoint is also the foundation for Sophos Extended Detection and Response (XDR) and Sophos Endpoint Detection and Response capabilities (EDR).

“We’ve strategically engineered our products and services to work together and with third-party systems to create comprehensive, preventive and highly actionable defenses,” said Rob Harrison, senior vice president of product management at Sophos. “We’re also committed to innovation, which is critical for consistent protection against aggressive and determined cybercriminals. Sophos Endpoint protections, specifically Sophos Intercept X, continue to be recognized as industry-leading, which reflects our innovative approach to developing defenses against the latest and anticipated attacker tactics, techniques and procedures, including the recent increase in the deliberate use of remote ransomware to evade detection.”

“Adaptive attack protection, introduced in early 2023, is a demonstration of Sophos’ means to disrupt hands-on-keyboard attackers while minimizing potential disruption to legitimate operations. Tuned to detect attackers pivoting to more aggressive tactics, protection sensitivity is automatically elevated to prevent damage. Once the malicious activity is no longer present, normal protections are automatically reestablished. Sophos critical attack warning alerts security personnel when immediate attack responses are necessary. Responses, estate wide if warranted, can be orchestrated through Sophos MDR, incident response (IR) or XDR. The prevalence of ransomware attacks compels organizations to be prepared to recover,” said the IDC report.

“With their professional and managed security services, expanded product set, and ability to integrate with existing security investments, it’s clear that Sophos understands the needs and challenges of a midsize business,” said Michael Suby, research vice president, Security & Trust, IDC. “Sophos’s comprehensive approach from prevention through recovery places Sophos on the shortlist of midsize businesses looking for an established and effective partner for security.”

Managed in the cloud-native Sophos Central platform, Sophos’ portfolio solutions are part of the Sophos Adaptive Cybersecurity Ecosystem, where security data is collected, correlated and enriched with additional context to enable automatic and synchronized responses to active threats.

This platform is further optimized by Sophos X-Ops threat intelligence, a cross-operational task force of more than 500 security experts within SophosLabs, Sophos SecOps and SophosAI.

However, the market is expected to recover with flat growth forecast in 2024 followed by slow growth in the following years.

Global Smart Tvs shipments are forecast to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.3% over the 2023-2027 forecast period.

“With the backdrop of high inflation and long refresh cycles, much of the growth with the smart TV market is relegated to emerging markets,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. “However, within mature markets, TVs are quickly transitioning from media consumption screens to ecosystem gateways, enticing brands such as Amazon, Roku, and others to compete on price while providing meaningful features that integrate with the broader smart home.”

“Weak consumer demand in places like North America has put significant downward pressure on shipments in 2023, which is likely to persist into most of 2024,” said Adam Wright, research manager, Smart Home and Office Devices at IDC. “Many vendors expect that persistent economic headwinds will continue to hamper the market through the first half of next year, but for now are relying on sales of premium televisions to help buoy their bottom lines. Whether that strategy is sustainable long-term remains to be seen.”

[Featured Image Credit]

This spending, which includes GenAI software and related infrastructure hardware as well as IT/business services, is expected to more than double in 2024 and reach $151.1 billion in 2027 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 86.1% over the 2023-2027 forecast period.

“Despite IT headwinds in 2023, businesses accelerated their exploration of GenAI to boost business transformation.

In 2024, the shift to AI everywhere will enter a critical buildout phase as enterprises make major new investments with the goal of drastically reducing the time and costs associated with customer and employee productivity use cases. From there, the focus will shift to investments that boost revenue and business outcomes,” said Rick Villars, group vice president, Worldwide Research at IDC.

IDC expects GenAI investments to follow a natural progression over the next several years as organizations transition from early experimentation to aggressive infrastructure and trained data model building to widespread adoption with extensions to the edge of all business activities.

While companies at all levels will experience a shift in their technology investments toward AI implementation and the adoption of AI-enhanced products/services, the IT industry will make much a greater and faster AI pivot during the same period. This is because every company will race to introduce AI-enhanced products/services and to assist their customers with AI implementations. For most, AI will replace cloud as the lead motivator of innovation.

GenAI Infrastructure, including hardware, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and system infrastructure software (SIS), will represent the largest area of investment during the build out phase. But GenAI Platform and Application Software will gradually overtake infrastructure by the end of the forecast with a five-year CAGR of 99.6%. Similarly, GenAI Services, including IT and business services, will nearly equal infrastructure spending by the end of the forecast with a five-year CAGR of 94.2%.

By the end of the forecast, GenAI spending will account for 29.0% of overall AI spending, up significantly from 10.8% in 2023. GenAI spending will remain strong well beyond the build out phase as these solutions become a foundational element in enterprises’ digital business control platforms.

“Generative AI has served as a catalyst for investments in traditional AI solutions. The synergy between traditional and generative AI opens up a world of possibilities across industries,” said Ritu Jyoti, group vice president, Worldwide Artificial Intelligence and Automation market research and advisory services at IDC. “As we look ahead to the future of AI, embracing a holistic approach that merges traditional AI with generative creativity will enable more versatile AI systems capable of adapting to evolving challenges while fostering disruptive innovation.”

The IDC report, GenAI Implementation Market Outlook: Worldwide Core IT Spending for GenAI Forecast, 2023–2027 (Doc #US51539723), provides an update to IDC’s initial consolidated worldwide GenAI implementation forecast, published in October 2023.

The new forecast includes insights on how, where, and when organizations will allocate their spending on core IT technology products/services to implement the capabilities within their businesses from 2023 to 2027.

More detailed forecasts, including the impact on end devices, network services, and software applications that are enhanced through incorporation of GenAI, will be published in the coming months, IDC said.

[Featured Image Credit]

International Data Corporation (IDC) forecasts worldwide shipments of gaming monitors to grow 10.8% year over year in 2023 while gaming PCs are expected to decline 10.5%.

Despite the decline in gaming PCs, the market is expected to contract less than the overall PC market as buyers take advantage of low pricing on previous generation products and discounting on the current generation due to excess inventory.

Meanwhile, gaming monitors have already managed to rebound during the first half of 2023 as vendors focus on more profitable segments of the display market amidst a general downturn.

“Poor macroeconomic conditions continue to reduce purchasing power for general consumers and gamers alike,” said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC’s Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. “While the global economy has begun to improve, many gamers are cautious with their spending, prompting them to hold onto their exising PCs for longer or to consider purchasing refurbished gaming PCs in the near future in order to control costs.”

“After five quarters of year-on-year volume declines, the gaming monitor market managed to regain positive momentum in the second quarter,” said Jay Chou, research manager for IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker. “Improved cost structures and continued industry focus means we should expect a stronger recovery in this part of the gaming device landscape. With a typical gaming monitor costing a little over $300, it presents a cost-effective way to improve user experience both in and out of gaming.”

As the market struggles in the near term, improvements are expected in 2024 and beyond with gaming PCs achieving a 4.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2023 and 2027. Gaming monitors are forecast to have a 7.7% CAGR during the same period.

IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Gaming Tracker provides detailed and timely information for the global PC gaming market, including data and insight into desktop (DT) and notebook (NB) gaming systems as well as gaming monitors.

The program provides insightful analysis, quarterly market share data, and a five-year forecast that can be broken down by key geographies.