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Tablet imports fall sharply on low demand

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A pupil at St Mary’s Primary School in Nakuru uses a tablet. FILE PHOTO | NMG

The number of tablets shipped to Kenya fell by a large margin in the three months to September as the markets felt the ramifications of reduced demand from the public sector.

In its latest statistical release, the International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that the situation in Kenya was in keeping with regional trends in Middle East and elsewhere in Africa where the market for personal computing devices fell 15.2 per cent in comparison to a similar period last year.

“Kenya suffered huge declines in its tablet market after a massive education project that boosted shipments in Q3 2016 was not repeated in Q3 2017,” said Fouad Charakla, IDC’s senior research manager for client devices in the Middle East, Turkey and Africa.

IDC did not, however, specify the percentage or absolute number by which tablet shipments to Kenya had dropped.  

The 5.9 million units of desktop computers, notebooks, workstations and tablets shipped into the region represented a five-year low.  The poor performance in the personal computing devices was partially attributable to low volumes of tablet shipment.