The Indian tablet market sales (unit shipments) touch 550,000 units in second quarter of 2012 recording a quarter-on-quarter increase of 59 per cent and year-on-year increase of 673 per cent, according to a survey conducted by CyberMedia Research.
But the surprise revelation of the survey was domestic player Micromax, which emerged as the leader in terms of market share, followed by Samsung and Apple.
Micromax leads with 18.4 per cent share, followed by Samsung at second position with 13.3 per cent and Apple at third position with 12.3 per cent, in terms of sales (unit shipments) during Q2 2012.
"During Q2 2012, 47.4 per cent of tablet sales were from new entrants in the market with a strong focus on addressing application areas in the education and entertainment segments. This trend demonstrates clearly that vendors are positioning their devices at India's youth," said Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice.
The report also stated that the increase in shipments in the overall tablet market was mainly due to entry of new tablet vendors and introduction of offerings from existing vendors at low to medium price points.
Close to 90 vendors launched their tablets till Q2 2012.The average selling value (ASV) of the tablets in Q2 2012 has dropped to little above Rs 13,000 from Rs 26,000 in Q1 2012, as a majority of vendors in early 2012 launched their products in the Rs 5,000-10,000 price range.
"Going forward we see vendors launching segments specific tablets such as healthcare, retail and e-Governance. In terms of tablet use cases, the popular categories are Internet browsing, email, entertainment, gaming, social networking, information (Cricket, Flights, and so on). Clearly, the Indian user is also taking to the tablet as a content consumption device," added Tarun Pathak, analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice.
