Tablets close on PCs

Global shipments of tablets rose 142% year on year in the first quarter of 2013, while those of PCs were down 14% in the same period, as consumers increasingly choose the portable option, new data has revealed.

Statistics from IDC, the research company, show that a total of 49.2m tablets and 76.3m PCs were shipped.

Within the tablet market some significant shifts have taken place, as the Apple-Samsung rivalry for the top spot continues to evolve.

Apple's year-on-year growth of 65.3% for tablet shipments was dwarfed by Samsung's 282.6% increase.

Despite this, Apple remained the market leader with a 39.6% share in Q1 2013, more than double that of Samsung, which stood at 17.9%. But this was a sharp decline from the 58.1% share it had claimed a year earlier.

In addition, Apple is under pressure from devices based on Google's Android operating system which now account for 56.5% of tablet shipments, up from 39.4% a year ago and overtaking Apple's iOS devices.

One of these was the highly marketed Nexus 7 device which helped ASUS take the third spot, increasing shipments by 350% to a total of 2.7m and gaining a 5.5% share.

Amazon was in fourth place shipping an estimated 1.8m Kindles, followed by Microsoft which gained a 1.8% share, with 0.9m Surface Pro and Surface RT tablets shipped.