What you need to know
- Honor highlights an IDC report on the Q2 2026 Android tablet market in EMEA, in which the market dipped by 10.5% YoY.
- Honor surged ahead with positive growth in Q2, with a 25.3% YoY increase.
- The brand's latest tablet, the MagicPad 4, brought a better OLED display that pushed boundaries and focused on PWM dimming in a way that its competitors do not.
There's been a lot of speculation about the state of tablets. Honor's coming forward to end the week with market data that silences those whispers.
This morning (Sept. 18), Honor directed us to an IDC report about the state of the Android tablet market in EMEA for Q2 2026. It's worth mentioning what's already evident: the Android tablet market (unit shipments) in EMEA dropped by 10.5% YoY (year-over-year), down to 5.9 million units. While Samsung still holds the majority of the tablets shipped despite this fall, it's Honor that's silencing the crowd.
According to the IDC report, Honor experienced a massive 25.3% YoY increase in Android tablet shipments. This was the strongest recorded growth for Android. So we're clear, EMEA consists of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Honor highlights a statement by IDC's senior research manager, Daniel Goncalves, who pointed out the brand's "established presence."
Goncalves said, "Many of these recent challengers to Samsung’s dominance in the Android tablet space, such as Honor, have leveraged their established presence in the smartphone market to expand into tablets." It's also worth noting that the only other Android brand to see growth in Q2 was Xiaomi, but at a lower 3.4% YoY.
Hold on, tablets still have a chance
Honor's most recent tablet is the MagicPad 4, and it features a display that pushes boundaries. The old, tired LCD panel Honor used in 2025 has been replaced by a much brighter and more vibrant OLED screen. What's more, my colleague Nicholas Sutrich marveled at what Honor did with it: the company provided 5,320Hz PWM dimming. This is a significant step in the right direction, and something Sutrich notes other companies tend to ignore.
We often tend to ignore tablets. Look at the state of the phone market. We have foldables that can double as tablets. In Q2, the phone market saw another dip, and it's unlikely that it will recover in any major way. The market fell by 4%, thanks to the ongoing memory crisis. Samsung and Apple were key players that saw modest increases—2$ and 4%, respectively. The market is expected to continue to fall even into the holiday season.
Android Central's Take
I also struggle with the idea of a tablet. I like the idea of one, but to go and get one seems... unwise. I have my phone. I can do everything I want on it, and if I need a larger screen, I have my PC. It's a strange situation to find myself in because I used to have a tablet before. I used it in tandem with my computer—not my phone. I guess things have switched around in that regard.
