Price hikes have "scared off" consumers, and domestic iPad sales in China plunged by 45.2% in the third quarter.

The rising prices of smart tablets are dampening consumers' willingness to purchase.

Recently, the "Monthly Tracking Report on China's Smart Tablet Retail Market" released by RUNTO shows that in the third quarter of 2026, the omni-channel sales volume of China's consumer-grade smart tablet market reached 6.361 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 20.1%. The agency predicts that the annual sales volume will reach 25.82 million units, a year-on-year decline of 20.8%.

In cumulative terms, the total sales volume in the first three quarters was 19.148 million units, down 19.1% year on year. Compared with the positive growth rate of 13.3% in 2025, the decline this year is within the industry's expectation, but the drop has far exceeded the forecast at the beginning of the year.

The average price on mainstream e-commerce platforms in this quarter was 3,089 yuan, up 9.1% year on year. The sales share of the 3,000-3,999 yuan price segment reached 28.0%, up 7.4 percentage points year on year, becoming the largest sales segment in this quarter.

On mainstream e-commerce platforms, Apple, Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi (including Redmi), and OPPO (including OnePlus) rank top 5 in the sales list, with a combined share of 63.9%, down 1.4 percentage points from the same period last year.

Among them, Apple's single-quarter sales volume dropped sharply by 45.2% year on year, and its market share decreased by 8.5 percentage points year on year to 19.1%, still ranking first in the mainstream e-commerce sales revenue in this quarter.

According to RUNTO's analysis, Apple raised the prices of the full iPad product line at the end of June, and the impact of the price adjustment on demand further emerged in the third quarter. The price increase of core models has become an important reason for the sales pressure.

On June 25 this year, due to the continuous rising cost of memory and storage chips, Apple announced to raise the prices of iPad and Mac products.

Apple stated in its statement: "The consumer electronics industry is facing unprecedented challenges. The rapid expansion of AI data centers has led to a surge in demand for memory and storage. We have never seen component prices rise at such an astonishing rate and magnitude. So far, we have been working hard to avoid passing these increased costs on to our customers, but now we have reached a point where we have to start raising the prices of many products, including the price adjustments for iPad and Mac announced today."

According to Apple's official website in China, the starting price of iPad Air has been raised from 4,799 yuan to 5,999 yuan, an increase of 25.01%; the starting price of Macbook Neo has been raised from 4,599 yuan to 5,499 yuan, an increase of 19.57%; the starting price of Macbook Air has been raised from 8,499 yuan to 9,999 yuan, an increase of 17.65%; the starting price of 14-inch Macbook Pro has been raised from 13,499 yuan to 15,999 yuan, an increase of 18.52%.

"The prices of tablets have indeed been raised recently. This is an official global price adjustment by Apple, and stores have updated synchronously. As for the sales situation, there is no detailed data for the time being," a customer service staff from an authorized Apple store told Jiemian News on November 12.

Regarding the overall decline of the market, RUNTO believes that the core contradiction dragging down the market has not changed essentially, and the pressure has only been further transmitted and amplified in this quarter: the national subsidy policy in 2025 concentratedly released users' purchasing power, which not only raised the comparison base, but also overdrawn the phased demand for purchasing tablets in advance; entering 2026, although the subsidy policy continues, its marginal driving effect has weakened significantly, and its promotional effect on the market has been basically diluted by rising costs.

In fact, the prices of core components such as DRAM/NAND/CPU have skyrocketed unilaterally this year and remain at a high level currently. In the third quarter, the inventory of low-cost materials in the early stage was exhausted. Under the long-term accumulated pressure, brands had to raise selling prices and reduce the supply of low-cost models, and the fragile market demand fell accordingly.

The report shows that RUNTO has lowered its full-year forecast, predicting that the omni-channel sales volume of domestic consumer-grade smart tablets in 2026 will be 25.82 million units, down 20.8% year on year, and the adjustment pressure will continue into 2027.

RUNTO judges that the tight supply of memory and storage is difficult to ease in the short term, which will continue to affect the supply rhythm, configuration schemes and price trend of the smart tablet market. This round of cost-driven structural adjustment is expected to form continuous constraints on the market in 2027.

The industry downturn is universal. According to the Omdia report, the global tablet shipments in the third quarter of 2026 were only 32.191 million units, a sharp year-on-year decline of 23%, hitting the lowest single-quarter shipment record in nearly three years, among which the decline in the Chinese market is higher than the global average.

This article is from "Jiemian News", written by Jiang Yiman JYM, and published with authorization by 36Kr.