India Tablet PC shipments touch 1.36 million in Q3 2015: CMR Study

NEW DELHI: According to the released recently CyberMedia Research (CMR) India Quarterly Tablet PC Market Review 3Q (July-September) 2015, nearly 1.36 million Tablet PCs were sold (shipped) in the quarter by as many as thirty-eight domestic and international vendors.

However, only twelve (12) vendors shipped in significant volumes of more than 20,000 units each during the period. The overall increase in shipments of Tablets in the India market registered a 31.8% growth year-on-year (3Q CY 2015 over 3Q CY 2014) and a 27.1% growth quarter-on-quarter (3Q CY 2015 over 2Q CY 2015).

The study says that the increase can be attributed mainly to the aggressive approach by Pantel Technologies, which earlier used to be exclusively packaged with BSNL mobile services. The vendor has now broadened focus to target both the Government and Retail sectors. Further, on account of the festive season in India, a number of vendors pre-stocked shipments for sale during the month of October. Players that saw a good growth in this quarter versus the previous quarter were Pantel Technology, Samsung, Micromax, Datawind, iBall and Lenovo.

Commenting on the performance of the India Tablet PC market, Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst CMR Telecoms Practice said, “We have been repeatedly saying that Tablets need an enterprise/government orientation and this is what players like Pantel have been able to successfully adopt. With not much sales happening at the consumer side and the enterprises also not so bully about this product, the procurement in the government domain have helped this product to re-surface.”

“However, as government goes by the cost effective purchasing system, we will see low-priced brands like Pantel, Datawind, etc. having an edge compared to other vendors like Micromax, Samsung and Xiaomi. For them to grow, Tablets have to get along consumers and enterprises,” Faisal added.

Adding on to the findings for 3Q CY 2015, Tanvi Sharma, Analyst for Tablet Devices at CMR said, “While most of the broad specifications remain similar in this quarter as well and we did not observe any major shift in trending parameters, however, it is worth noting that in the sub Rs 10,000 segment, Rs 5,000–10,000 price bracket is growing significantly. This is a healthy indication that while the consumer is accepting low priced devices, it is at the same time keeping a check on the quality thus pushing the device cost above Rs 5,000. In the past, under Rs 5,000 devices had quality issues and majority of the consumers were not happy with the products in this price range.”

“We are expecting in year 2016, to see some major shift in the trending specifications as Tablets are very likely to follow the Smartphone trend of improving specifications over a period of time. Tablets have perhaps reached that stage now where it has to happen,” concluded Tanvi.