Tablet Growth Stalls in India but Mobiles Picking Up the Slack: MAIT Survey

While PC sales grew at just 6 percent in the last year, driven mostly by government demand, this same spending has driven up the notebook sales in India in 2013-14 by a whopping 55 percent, according to a survey carried out jointly by the manufacturer's association MAIT, and the research agency IMRB.

However, the big changes that have taken place in the last one year are in the mobile space. In last year's report, MAIT had noted that tablet sales in 2012-13 had grown by an astonishing 424 percent and had cautioned that a steady decline in growth would follow.

In fact, the total growth in tablet sales in 2013-14 was only approximately 1.4 million units, less than the estimated 1.6 million unit growth in 2012-13, and the growth had dropped to just 76 percent.

(Also see: Low-cost tablets drive sales in India to 4.14 million in 2013: IDC)

At the same time, mobile phone sales went from an estimated 15.22 million in 2012-13 to 52.43 million in 2013-14, and the rate of growth went up from 60 percent in 2012-13 to a massive 244 percent in 2013-14.

(Also see: Micromax, Karbonn help push 2013 India smartphone shipments over 44 million mark)

There are multiple reasons for this change - for one thing, MAIT president Amar Babu notes, the requirement for BIS certification immediately removed a number of low cost tablets, and the people who were buying a Rs. 4,000 tablet have not increased their budget to purchase tablets.

The other reason, he says, is the growing popularity of the phablet, which is able to deliver a large screen experience while still remaining fully functional as a phone. "Today, you can get a really good 5-inch screened phablet for around Rs. 10,000, so why would you get a tablet instead?"

In the PC market, sales were largely driven by SMBs and government orders, he notes, adding that households have largely been adopting notebooks.

(Also see: Indian PC shipments fall 20 percent, Dell sees strong gains: Gartner)

However, Babu says that the coming year will be a difficult one for PC manufacturers, as it is believed that a lot of the government spending will drop now.

Despite this, he does not feel that the desktop is going away any time soon, and noted the growth of the AiO segment, which he says holds a lot of potential.