As traditional tablet sales go south – down 16% for the half year this year compared to 2014 - in contrast, the 2-in-1 market is exploding with the popular hybrid machines racing off retail shelves.

In fact, the slowing of traditional tablet sales saw only 1.5 million units sold in the first half of 2015.

Meanwhile, across the aisle from the tablets, total sales of the hybrid machines in the Australian market are already at 500,000 for the half year this year and forecast to increase to 1.54 million a year by 2017 – a tripling of sales as forecast by analyst firm Telsyte.

The analyst firm also says that overall, the Australian tablet market has been characterised by a sharp decline in low end device sales and “the emergence of the premium 2-in-1 devices”.

Telsyte says Apple iOS devices retained leadership with 48% market share, while Android devices with 38% (down 4%), lost ground to Windows-based devices which now make up 14% (up 4%) of the market.

And, according to Telsyte, Microsoft is now the third largest player after Apple and Samsung in the tablet market.

The early growth in the market for the increasingly popular 2-in-1 machines is not unexpected and, as iTWire’s Stan Beer pointed out as far back as August, there’s a big player absent from this burgeoining hybrid market for small, versastile machines – Apple.

As Beer said in his ‘Message to Apple – how about a MacPad!” article:

“While everybody is ruminating over the death of the laptop and prognosticating that the Mac successor should be an oversized iPad, is it possible that they’re all missing the obvious?

“The answer to delivering the ideal next generation device is staring Apple in the face and it already has everything it needs to make it.”

Telsyte managing director Foad Fadaghi says in the report released today that the tablet market has been “impacted by larger screen smartphones and buyers seeking greater functionality from their next tablet purchase.”

Telsyte says it expects Windows-based tablets and 2-in-1s will grow to around a third of the market by 2017, where they should exceed Android tablet sales based on current trends, with Fadaghi commenting that “Windows-based tablets and 2-in-1s will benefit from an upgrade cycle that started with the arrival of Windows 10 and is expected to continue into 2017.”

And Telsyte notes in its report that it believes the stage is set for a battle between professional devices suitable for workplace applications such as the Surface Pro 4 and iPad Pro, and that the arrival of these devices is expected to help to boost sales in the second half of 2015 to 1.8 million units

Telsyte estimates that there were 13.7 million tablet users in Australia as of the end of June, with new user growth expected to mainly come from those under 16 years of age and those above 65, given market saturation in most other age groups.