There have been a lot of headlines over the past year regarding slumping tablet sales. Even the almighty iPad has seen declines. From recent Asus investors conferences, the company is keeping a modest expectation for tablet sales leading into 2016. In 2015, Asus sold 5.9 million tablets and in 2016, the company is hoping to ship somewhere around 5 to 6 million tablets.
What you’re starting to see now, is an increase in the 2-in-1 options, like the Transformer Book. Having a keyboard and tablet combination is hoping to create some growth in the industry. This type of device makes more sense in the Windows 10 setting, and the 2-in-1 Android offerings are not that plentiful. It will be interesting to see what Asus does in 2016 regarding possible Android based 2-in-1 products. Wait for Computex 2016 in June for those possibilities.
From what we have observed, Asus may have seen a break even situation for their ZenPad tablets in 2015 largely due to supply issues. For a majority of the year, especially in the US market, the hero ZenPad S 8.0 (Z580CA) was largely unavailable. Just our opinion that with a wider release of the Z580CA, it’s likely Asus would have seen stronger sales numbers. From the email messages we receive, most people have been asking about whether the Z580CA would be available in their country. So India for example, still has yet to see a Z580CA release, which in our mind, are sales that were there to be had.
We expect to see news about the 2016 ZenPad tablets very soon. We do expect to see higher resolution models, and perhaps fewer models this year. We can’t wait to bring you the news!
