Poor user demand has resulted into a sluggish start of the 2014 for the Indian tablet market. As per recent report from IDC, tablet shipments in India dropped by 32.8 per cent for the first quarter of 2014 at 0.78 million units.
The research firm stated that the market will see similar trend owing to rising popularity of phablets and the issue of Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) certification.
Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) compliance is certainly hurting the white-box market. International device vendors like Apple and Samsung grew in comparison against Q4 2013, posting significant double-digit growth rates in Q1. However at an overall level, the branded vendors were unable to capitalize on the space left vacant by the erosion from white-box and smaller vendors
said Karan Thakkar, Senior Market Analyst of Tablets, Enterprise Client Devices and PC Monitors, IDC India.
Giving insights about the top tablet vendors, IDC touted that Samsung led the market in India with market share followed by Apple (14.4%), Micromax (8.8%) and Datawind (6.8%). Samsung was able to tap the market due to 7-8 inch screen size category while iPad Mini and iPad Air helped Apple gain the second stop behind Micromax who had a slower quarter compared to Q4, 2013.