Shipment value of the Taiwanese tablet industry stood at around US$4.7 billion in the first quarter of 2014, down 46.6% sequentially. The slackened first-quarter shipment volume coupled with the declining shipments for Apple products that often have higher ASP (Average Selling Price), tablet ASP slipped 10% sequentially to US$207 in the first quarter of 2014.

Outlook for 2015

Microsoft launched on May 20 a 12-inch large-screen tablet, dubbed Surface Pro 3, which is designed to address the work productivity with a detachable keyboard provided. Devices with similar specs with Surface Pro 3 are Samsung 12.2" Note Pro and Apple's 12.9" MaxiPad which is slated to hit the market at the beginning of 2015.

Those tablets - which have ultrabook-alike technical specs such as panel, CPU, and OS as well as pricing - are gearing up to vie with ultrabooks for business users in the niche markets. Therefore, the impact of those high-priced tablets on affordable tablets is nothing compared to that of on ultrabooks.

Thus far, Wi-Fi (Wireless-Fidelity) tablets remain the mainstream. Apple constitutes the lion's share in the 3G/4G tablets whereas other brands' share remains insignificant. In addition to the price factor, the popularization of 3G/4G smartphones is another determinant factor to weaken the consumer demand for 3G/4G tablets.

Driven by the increasing switchover from Wi-Fi to 3G/4G and Intel's plan to roll out low-priced 3G integrated chips, the number of 3G/4G tablets is expected to see increase in 2015 albeit at a modest rate as 3G/4G tablets still price higher than Wi-Fi ones and the demand of smartphones remains robust.

Figure 1