Micromax becomes top tablet vendor with 18.4 percent market share

According to CMR's India Quarterly Media Tablet Market Review, the India tablet PC market saw sales of 0.55 million in Q2 compared to 71,788 units in the same period last year.

In January-March this year, the total shipment stood at 0.34 million, it said.

During April-June, 2012, Micromax led the tally with 18.4 percent share of the market, while Samsung followed at the second position with 13.3 percent share.

Apple occupied the third spot with 12.3 percent in terms of sales (unit shipments) during the same period, it added.

Though the tablet market in India is still at a nascent stage, but at the same time, has become competitive due to entry of new vendors with entry-level offerings, the report said.

Close to 90 vendors launched their tablets till Q2 2012.

The average selling value (ASV) in the said period dropped to little above Rs. 13,000 from Rs. 26,000 in the January-March 2012 period as a majority of vendors launched their products in the Rs. 5,000-10,000 price range.

"During 2Q 2012, 47.4 percent of tablet sales were from new entrants in the market with a strong focus on addressing application areas in the Education and Entertainment segments," CMR Lead Analyst (Telecoms Practice) Faisal Kawoosa said.

This trend demonstrates clearly that vendors are positioning their devices at India's youth, he added.

Android operating system had the lion's share of the market at 87.5 percent.

"As Android devices become increasingly popular with users across the world, competition is increasing in the India tablets market with more and more vendors launching devices based on the Android OS," he said.

The share of devices based on other operating systems like Windows, iOS and QNX are expected to rise in future in view of the recent announcement of the Microsoft Windows Surface Tablet, the global launch of the Apple iPad 3 and reduction in BlackBerry Playbook prices, Kawoosa added.

(CyberMedia Research (CMR) has uses the term "shipments" to describe the number of Tablets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. For the convenience of readers, the term shipments has been replaced by 'sales' but this reflects the market size in terms of units of tablets and not their absolute value.)