The Middle East and Africa (MEA) tablet market recorded a 2% quarterly decline in shipments during the second quarter of 2014 to total 3.95 million units, the IDC said on Wednesday.

Despite the decline, the MEA region remains the world's fastest growing region as it continues to be an area of focus for all vendors operating in the tablet space, the IDC has noted.

"The reasons for the quarter-on-quarter decline in Q2 2014 were twofold," said Victoria Mendes, a research analyst at IDC Middle East, Turkey, and Africa.

"We anticipated a slowdown in the Middle East due to the traditionally slow summer and Ramadan period, but there were also inventory pileups from the previous quarter in some parts of Africa and the Middle East, and these served to amplify the market's deceleration,” she said.

The IDC revealed that South Korean electronics company, Samsung, held onto the top spot as the region's number one tablet vendor for the second quarter of 2014.

Samsung shipped 862,000 units in Q2 of 2014.

In second place was Apple, shipping 622,000 units for the quarter.

Lenovo returned to the top three with 420,000 units, courtesy of a very strong push from the vendor as it targeted the region with numerous new tablet launches, according to the IDC.

In the fourth place was Asus, with a total of 284,000 units shipped in the quarter.

And rounding out the top five MEA tablet vendors for the quarter was General Mobile with 282,000 units, the IDC report states.

"The tablet market is undoubtedly witnessing a shift in terms of vendor shares," Mendes continued.

"Traditional PC vendors, such as Lenovo, ASUS, Toshiba, HP, and Acer, are becoming much more aggressive in terms of their product launches and pricing strategies, and this is driving a considerable shift in consumer demand from low-cost Far-Eastern players to these Tier-2 brands," she said.