Shipments reached 37 million units, with Latin America and the Middle East and Africa leading regional gains, while Apple stayed first at 14.8 million units and Samsung fell 12.6%.
Omdia said growth was driven mainly by inventory build-up rather than end-user demand, as vendors prioritised notebooks, desktops and smartphones and focused tablet efforts on more resilient premium models.
Huawei and Lenovo posted the strongest tablet growth, but Chromebook volumes fell sharply, with supply constraints and deferred education deployments expected to delay Japan's GIGA School Program 2.0.
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