Research firm Omdia counted about 11.6 million iPads shipped in the third quarter of 2026, down 27.5% from a year earlier. The whole tablet market shipped 32.2 million units, down 23% from 41.8 million, the lowest level in nearly three years.
Omdia counts sell-in shipments, meaning units sent to sellers, so the figures don’t measure customer purchases. The Portuguese-language MacMagazine report covers the same quarter.
Apple fell faster than the market, and Lenovo was the only top-five grower
Apple kept the top spot with 36% of shipments, but its share fell 2.2 percentage points, from 38.2%. Its 27.5% drop was steeper than the 23% fall in the whole market. Samsung, the second-largest seller, fell 21.7%. Huawei had the steepest drop of the top five, at 43%. Lenovo, in third place, was the only one of the five to grow, up 11.9% to a 12.7% share, while Xiaomi slipped 10.6%.
Omdia links the slump to supply limits and buyers who can wait
Omdia research manager Himani Mukka says supply constraints are “limiting vendors’ ability to deliver meaningful specification upgrades.” New models look close to their predecessors, and she expects buyers to delay purchases until the improvements are bigger. Buyers who need a tablet now can compare the models in an iPad buying guide.
IDC now expects a memory shortage to cut global smartphone shipments by 16.7% this year, deeper than the 12.9% it forecast in February, and it says low-cost Android devices will take the hardest hit. Mac shipments fell 11.3% in the same quarter, by IDC’s count.
The figures cover only the third quarter, so they do not show whether the slide continues into the holiday quarter. Omdia, however, doesn’t expect a meaningful tablet recovery before 2028. If your current iPad still works, these numbers alone are no reason to buy or wait.
