Indian digital user warms up to tablets

Indian digital consumer is adapting fast to tablet use. For the April-June quarter as many as 70 international and domestic vendors shipped 1.15 million units of tablets.

The overall growth in shipments of Tablets in the India market registered at 107.4% year-on-year (2Q CY 2013 over 2Q CY 2012) growth, but a more moderate 27.2% quarter-on-quarter (2Q CY 2013 over 1Q CY 2013) increase due to seasonal factors, according to CMR’s India Quarterly Tablet PC market review for second quarter.

“For a few quarters now, we have seen over a million shipments per quarter of Tablets with only 1Q 2013 being the exception. 2Q 2013 results have again shown that 1 million units a quarter is a sustainable number, which is a healthy indicator about adoption of the Tablet form factor in India in less than three years. If this trend continues to build up, I see adoption picking up and just a few quarters from now we should see shipment of significantly higher volumes,” said Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice.

The top three vendors, led by Samsung, Datawind and Micromax, corner 43.4% market share. Though the Indian market had plethora of vendors, only 13 vendors shipped in significant volumes of more than 20,000 units during the period. Top five vendors have market share of 55.8% and top 13 players have a market share above 80%.

Almost 80% of the Tablet models launched during this period were with both 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity, leading to a growth of 103% in shipments of 3G Tablets.

“This is the first quarter when Tablets with dual-SIM functionality arrived in the India market, thereby giving vendors an additional specification to differentiate their offerings. It will be interesting to see if there are any significant shifts in Tablet shipments in the forthcoming quarters. With the requirement for mandatory adherence to BIS certification it will be difficult for vendors who do not get their products BIS-approved to sell in India. This may lead to some consolidation in the India Tablets market in the short- to medium-term,” said Tarun Pathak, Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice.

Vendor	Share(%)
Samsung	21.2
Datawind*	12.5
Micromax	9.7
*excludes shipment of Aakash tablets