Having shipped 13.3 million iPads in the second quarter – meaning one in four tablets sold during the three-month period was an iPad – Apple is still seen as dominant in the market. However, powerful rival Samsung and a host of other firms are becoming viable competition with wares of their own that include Android and Windows-powered tablets.

Apple still has a large chunk of the pie with its 26.9 percent market share.  But the most telling number is 9.3,  the percentage by which the Cupertino company’s iPad has slipped year-over-year, according to PCWorld, concluding that “Apple’s grip on the tablet is loosening.” Samsung sold 8.5 million tablets in the second quarter and saw its market share grow a modest 1.6 percent.

The demand for tablets is increasing worldwide. In the second quarter of 2014, tech firms shipped 49.3 million units, an 11-percent uptick over the same period last year, according to research firm IDC’s data released this week.

Although the iPad all but created the market and became the most popular device, the tablet market is now in a “new phase” in which substitutes – including cheaper, no-name brand Android tablets – are entering the field and finding buyers, according to a statement from IDC research analyst Jitesh Ubrani.

Samsung, Lenovo, Asus and Acer are among the firms that have seen sales increase while Apple and analysts chalk up weak iPad sales to “economically weak markets and slow refreshes of tablets on the part of users, who are on to devices for longer-than-expected periods,” according to PCWorld.

Don’t count Apple out though. It is expected to get a boost from a deal with IBM to supply iPhones and iPads to enterprise firms which would reflect an Apple surge in the second quarter, according to an IDC analyst.

Moreover, the iPad’s dominance is being undercut by so-called “other” companies, which include Google and Amazon as well as no-name brands selling tablets at low prices. According to IDC, these have outsold all the top five companies combined.