The tablet market in India is finally showing signs of some improvement after a series of disappointing quarters in the past. Interestingly, homegrown tablet vendors Micromax, who has eaten into the tablet market of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (KRX:005930) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), drive the growth in the second quarter. According to the latest data released by IDC, nearly 860,000 units of tablets were shipped in India during the second quarter of this year. Korean electronics giant Samsung led the market with 163,400 unit shipments, but the biggest surprise came in the form of Micromax who leapfrogged Apple to grab the second lead position by shipping more than 120K tablet devices. When compared to the previous quarter performance of Apple and Micromax, it looks like both the companies have swiped their position in the list. In the first quarter of the year Apple followed Samsung with 14% market share while Micromax stood at third position with just 9%, which is vice-versa in the second quarter.
The tablet industry in India recorded a 9% quarter over quarter growth in Q2, 2014. Tablets with screen size between 7-inches and 8-inches emerged as the most favorite choice among tablet users. Nearly 88% of tablet shipped during the second quarter sported screen size of less than 8-inches.
The top five vendors of the tablet industry in India consisted a little above than half of the market during Q2 2014. Lenovo and Datawind were the other top players who, together, contributed 13% of the shipments.
However, unlike the Smartphone market, a big chunk of the tablet market was controlled by other regional and local players, which resulted in 45% of total tablet shipments during the second quarter of the year.
The performance of tablet devices during the second quarter also speaks about the growing influence of low-price and entry-level of tablet devices. While the majority of Samsung ‘s tablet sales came from sub-$200 tablet devices, iPad Mini emerged as the top-selling iPad with 60% of Apple’s total tablet sales driven by it.
It is worth noticing that, besides Apple iPad, most of the tablet shipped during the second quarter was powered by the Android OS. Nearly nine out of ten tablet devices that were shipped during the last quarter were booting Android OS, leaving almost no room for Windows OS running on Surface tablet.
Within last three months Micromax has almost doubled its tablet shipments, from 68K to 120K units. This growth has come at the cost of Samsung and Apple who shipped only 163K and 77K units – comparatively lesser than what they shipped in the first quarter. During the second quarter of 2014, Apple recorded a sharp decline of 34% in its shipment as compared to the previous quarter, while Samsung managed to control the decline only to 7%.
India is playing a key-role in the worldwide tablet market growth. In 2014, nearly 68 million devices would be shipped in the APAC – excluding Japan – region alone, making it the second largest region by the number of tablet shipments after Europe.
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