The analyst house blames the decline on a combination of unsustainable early growth and the fact that little has come in the way of innovations recently.

"The rate at which the tablet market grew from 2010 to 2013 was unlike many other consumer-oriented device markets we've seen before," said IDC worldwide mobile device trackers program VP Ryan Reith.

"However, it appears for many reasons consumers became less eager to refresh these devices, or in some instances purchase them at all. We continue to believe the leading driver for this was the increased dependency on smartphones, along with rather minimal technology and form factor progression."