Market research firm Omdia has released its analysis of the tablet market in 2025, and the numbers look good.

Tablet shipments hit 162 million units in 2025, a 9.8% year-over-year increase. The holiday quarter was especially strong with 44 million units shipped.

Reasons for Growth

The tablet market has seen many quarters of decline since the Covid-era boom in sales. Omdia suggests there are two reasons sales spiked last year:

• Holiday demand, spurred by retailer discounting (the A16 iPad was on sale pretty much all of November and December, for example).
• Retailers building up inventory in advance of the current memory shortages in the consumer technology
• Regional growth, especially in Central & Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific

The iPad Continues Its Dominant Position

Omdia estimates Apple shipped nearly 20 million iPads in the fourth calendar quarter of 2025, a 16.5 percent increase over last year. The report specifically calls out the strength of both the A16 iPad and the M5 iPad Pro which launched in that quarter. Apple also highlighted these devices in their quarterly earnings when speaking about iPad growth. The next closest competitor, Samsung, actually saw a shipment decline in Q4, shipping 6.4 million units, a 9.2% decline.

It’s possible that the M5 iPad Pro sales were strong because of its launch quarter, and they’ll settle back down as 2026 goes on. It’s just interesting to me it’s called out as a growth driver, when people were falling all over themselves to declare the M4 iPad Pro a sales disappointment when it launched.

Challenges Ahead

The Omdia report calls out the current PC memory shortages as a significant challenge for the tablet market going forward. As memory prices continue to rise, driven by scarcity, lower end tablet pricing could be especially impacted.

The iPad itself will face some interesting challenges itself this year, if rumors are to be believed, from Apple itself. Between the rumored launch of the first folding iPhone, what will unfold into a roughly iPad Mini sized device, and the launch of the first touchscreen MacBook Pros, many pundits are already questioning if there’s still a place for the iPad. Ultimately that’s for the market to decide.

My two cents? Either or both of these devices will replace the iPad for people who don’t actually use iPads or have already given up on them. Apple has continued to sell millions of iPads a year, even though touchscreen PCs and folding Android phones have existed for years. I don’t think Apple entering these markets is going to change that.