A new report by Chinese tech site 35Kr was excited to announce that Huawei Was the leader in tablets in China in Q4 2023 beating out Apple's iPad, the long standing leader in the market worldwide by a wide margin.  Yet the win was by the tiniest margin of 0.3%, according to IDF-China.  This could simply be a matter of a statistical margin of error. Major swings in statistical reports are quite common between IDC, Canalys, TrendForce and Gartner. On that basis alone, there's not much here to getting exciting about in IDC's latest report outside of China.  

Considering that Apple didn't release a new iPad in 2023, Huawei's win, if it's even really that, is nothing to brag about. Though for propaganda purposes it's understandably important to crack a mental barrier that the iPad can't be beat.

In this situation, it's the market trend that perhaps worth noting. In Q3 2023, Huawei took a 90% leap in annual shipments and grew its market share from 15% to 24%. Apple's market share in Q3 2023 was 31%.

Huawei's leap to tie or beat Apple was largely due to releasing three new tablets in the second half of the year with their new flagship MatePad beating Apple's iPad with a sharp 13.2" OLED display being released in December 2023. It's a very slick tablet promoted with with great marketing as noted in their promo video below.  

Today Patently Apple posted a report titled "LG and Samsung have begun OLED Display Production for Apple's next-gen iPads," that are expected to hit the market as early as next month." They can't come fast enough to ensure that Apple retakes the top tablet spot in China in Calendar Q1 2024 resoundingly.

The 36Kr report does a deep dive into the tablet market in China and believes that 2024 will be the year that AI built into tablets could be where the next battleground will be.

Whether Apple will integrate AI features into a Q4 iPad refresh is unknown at this time, though Apple has hinted that AI will be coming to Apple devices later this year. We're likely to learn more about Apple's AI plans at WWDC24 this June.

For more on this, read the full 35Kr report.