Tablet PC market dips in India; Android tablets under Rs 10,000 dominate: CMR

Sharing the highlights of the report, Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice said, “The incumbent, early mover brands managed to maintain their leadership positions during the year, but the market seemed to signal movement along a different trajectory. Enterprises contributed about 21 per cent of the total tablet PC shipments in India during CY 2014. This, coupled with availability of Windows based solutions helped mainstream players like Lenovo, HP and Dell make strong inroads into this device category.”

“So, while 2015 is a challenging year for players like Samsung, Datawind and Micromax, it is equally going to throw up a challenge to Google to maintain its dominance through Android OS and not lose out to Microsoft Windows, as the enterprise adoption of Tablets picks up further,” Faisal cautioned.

Sachin Mehta, Analyst for Tablet PCs at CMR, expressed concern over the declining trends in Tablet PC shipments in the consumer segment.

The pace and momentum of Tablet PC adoption had moved at a fast pace in India and continued for a few years. Industry players expected this trend to continue unabated, but were unprepared by the success of phablets, that basically cannibalised tablet sales in 2014. This calls for Tablet designers to speed up innovation and stop offering just ‘a large screen size smartphone’. The space needs to be re-invented, with an Indian context. Certainly, content consumption needs to be the focus whether it is for entertainment, gaming, education or personal productivity.”

“One of the possible ways of differentiating Tablets is perhaps for industry to discontinue the production of 7-inch devices, to give target buyers a noticeable difference in look-and-feel, compared to Phablets that are essentially of the order of 5 to 6 inch screen size. This move may affect the market for some time, as the 7 inch form factor still contributes 72 per cent of sales, but will serve the cause of the product category in the long run,” added Mehta.