India tablet shipments up 32% to 1.36 million units in July-Sept

New Delhi: Tablet shipments in India grew 31.8 percent y-o-y to nearly 1.36 million units in the September quarter, research firm CyberMedia Research said Saturday.

Total shipments stood at 1.03 million units in the third quarter of 2014, while the same stood at 1.07 million in the April-June period.

"Nearly 1.36 million tablet PCs were sold (shipped) in the quarter by as many as 38 domestic and international vendors. However, only 12 vendors shipped in significant volumes of more than 20,000 units each during the period," CMR said in a statement.

It attributed the growth to the aggressive approach by Pantel Technologies (16.4 percent share), which was earlier exclusively packaged with state-run telecom operator BSNL's mobile services.

"The vendor has now broadened focus to target both the government and retail sectors. Further, on account of the festive season in India, a number of vendors pre-stocked shipments for sale during the month of October," it added.

Other players that saw a good growth in this quarter versus the previous quarter were Samsung (14.9 percent share), Micromax (14 percent), Datawind (13.2 percent), iBall (11.8 percent), CMR said.

"We have been repeatedly saying that tablets need an enterprise/government orientation and this is what players like Pantel have been able to successfully adopt. With not much sales happening at the consumer side and the enterprises also not so bully about this product, the procurement in the government domain have helped this product to re-surface," CMR lead analyst telecoms practice Faisal Kawoosa said.

However, as government goes by the cost effective purchasing system, one will see low-priced brands like Pantel, Datawind, etc having an edge compared to other vendors like Micromax, Samsung and Xiaomi, he added.

"It is worth noting that in the sub Rs 10,000 segment, Rs 5,000-10,000 price bracket is growing significantly. This is a healthy indication that while the consumer is accepting low priced devices, it is at the same time keeping a check on the quality thus pushing the device cost above Rs 5,000," CMR analyst for tablet devices Tanvi Sharma said.