Micromax Beats Apple to Take Second Spot in Indian Tablet Market: IDC

"Strong performance in Q2 2014 allowed Micromax to tip Apple to the second spot," an IDC statement here said.

Samsung, with 19 percent market-share, occupies the top position in the Indian tablet market. It is followed by Micromax (14 percent) and Apple (9 percent), the data showed. IDC added that more than 60 percent of the iPad tablets shipped in India in the quarter were iPad mini.

According to IDC, the Indian tablet market has indicated early signs of recovery in the second quarter (April-June) of 2014 after taking a sharp hit in the past couple of quarters. Tablet shipments in India stood at 0.86 million units in Q2 2014, which is a quarter-on-quarter growth of 9 percent over first quarter (January-March) 2014.

"This recovery was fuelled by multiple factors. Business sentiments have shown improvement post elections and near term prospects are anticipated to remain better too. Further, traditional PC OEMs have started making big inroads in the tablet market and most of this success is led by leveraging their vast expanded reach through multiple distribution points," Karan Thakkar, senior market analyst, IDC India said.

Android continued to be the most preferred operating system (OS). With 89.6 percent market share, Android is expected to sail above the 80 percent mark over the next few years. Windows OS is gaining ground too, it said.

"Improved discretionary spends by end-users and festive buying is expected to drive growth in the tablet market in the coming quarters. IDC anticipates this to be well supported by the optimism witnessed around enterprise IT spending in the recent past," Kiran Kumar, research manager, client devices, IDC India said.