The successive iPad 5 and iPad Mini 2 releases in the last few months of 2013 will spur incredible growth for the global tablet market following an overall weak performance for the industry in the June quarter this year, a new report said.

According to IDC, tablet shipments in Q2 2013 dropped by 9.7 per cent and the decline was directly blamed to the release calendar shift that Apple had adopted in the latter part of 2012, which saw the company's tablet upgrade cycle being moved from the beginning of second quarter in a given year to early fourth quarter.

It has been the norm since the first iPad was introduced in 2010 and as a result, amazing tablet sales figures have been recorded in the aftermath of the June quarter, which lasted through the end of Q2 2012.

The situation changed last year when Apple rolled out both the iPad 4 and the iPad Mini, which delivered record tablet sales numbers for the tech giant in the six months spanning form October 2012 though March 2013.

But without a freshly-minted iPad, a slide was seen by the end June this year, with tablet makers only pushing out some 45 million tablets from April to June, decreasing by almost 10 per cent from Q1 2013, the IDC report said.

This is the first time that a second quarter retreat was posted since Apple reinvented the tablet computer more than three years and created the tablet sub-market. Needless to say, the iPad was the catalyst that fired up the tablet market growth.

And the absence of a new builds in the past six months led to a slight quarterly decline but IDC noted that the industry actually registered a 60 per cent jump from the past 12 months, also ending in the June 2013 quarter.

It is likely that the same result will be replicated as Q3 2013 closes, despite the market entry of Google's Nexus 7 and Samsung's Galaxy Tab 3 series, though the research firm is upbeat of a giant rebound at the end of December 2013.

The growth driver, of course, would be the slimmed down and iOS 7-powered iPad 5, which according to analysts will be released by Apple in early September 2013, alongside the equally-awaited low-cost iPhone, also dubbed as the iPhone Mini, the iPhone Lite and lately, the iPhone 5C.

"A new iPad launch always piques consumer interest in the tablet category and traditionally that has helped both Apple and its competitors," the IDC report was quoted by CNET as saying.

"By the fourth quarter we expect new products from Apple, Amazon, and others to drive impressive growth in the market," the research firm added.

It is possible too that the iPad Mini 2, with or without Retina, will be a huge growth factor for Apple's 2013 tablet thrust but its release date this year remains a big question mark. Some analysts have forecasted that the Mini 2 will touchdown between November and December this year.

But for Ming-chi Kuo of KGI Securities, the iPad Mini 2 debut will not take place until March or April 2014, citing components and production glitches as causes of the delay.