Apple has recently reported results for the fiscal second quarter of 2015 ended March 28, 2015 and saw strong iPhone 6 and Mac products shipments, but its iPad shipments were only 12.62 million units, down 23% on year, showing that demand for tablets is shrinking quickly and most tablet players are unlikely to achieve their shipment goals for 2015, according to sources from the upstream supply chain.

Asustek Computer is expected to ship only less than four million tablets in the first half and is unlikely to achieve its one million unit target and most likely to stay flat from the 9.4 million units from 2014 or slightly lower.

The sources pointed out that the iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3 both had unsatisfactory shipment performances, but the iPad mini 2, which received a price cut, had a rather strong demand, especially from China.

For the non-Apple tablet market, US$99-199 devices are the mainstream and models featuring phone function are even more popular. Although several first-tier vendors are planning to release new tablets shortly, they only placed small orders to avoid inventory build up.

Seeing tablets no longer enjoying demand as they used to, many vendors have turned to focus on developing Windows-based 2-in-1 devices or 2-in-1 Chromebooks.

Apple posted quarterly revenues of US$58 billion and quarterly net profits of US$13.6 billion, or US$2.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenues of US$45.6 billion and net profit of US$10.2 billion, or US$1.66 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.8% compared to 39.3% in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 69% of the quarter's revenues.