According to research firm IDC, while the global tablet industry is still growing, the market's overall growth in 2014 will only be 7.2 percent, a massive deceleration from the 52.5 percent growth seen in 2013. One of the most important reasons why there has been a slowdown is the expected absolute decline in the number of Apple’s iPads shipped in 2014. In addition, the tablet buying cycle is closer to that of PCs than that of smartphones.

Meanwhile, Android tablets, while still accounting for nearly 68 percent of the market, are expected to grow at 16 percent in 2014. With an expected 160 million shipped units by the end of the year, this could be the biggest year for Android tablets yet. However, due to significant pricing pressure, this also represents the least profitable year on a per unit basis. This may be very good news for low-margin white box tablet manufacturers in particular.

Where else is there growth? Primarily in the 2-in-1 product category, which accounted for 8.7 million units in 2014. While accounting for only 4 percent of the market, this was a new category in 2014 and has proved to be popular, with a few caveats. First, there is significant hesitance among buyers regarding the Windows 8 platform, on which most 2-in-1 tablets are based. Second, it remains to be seen if the tablets are truly capable of replacing existing notebook computers. Nevertheless, IDC expects Windows tablets and 2-in-1s to triple in size to about 32 million units in 2018.

Overall, IDC expects the market to grow from 235 million units in 2014 to just 286 million units by 2018, a 5.4 percent annual growth rate. IDC expects that Windows-based tablets and 2-in-1s will grow from 4 percent of the market today to become about 11.4 percent in 2018, at the expense of both iOS and Android device market share. iOS and Android devices will decline in market share to 24.5 percent and 64 percent respectively in 2018, each with an annual growth rate of 2.2 percent.