Tablet: Flying High

The Indian tablet industry in FY2012-13 witnessed the same trend that the Indian mobile phone sector had seen couple of years back.

Anticipating a huge and growing market, many of the existing handset players as well as some new entrants started launching and rolling out newer models at a regular interval. In 2009-10, there were more than 100 handset companies operating in Indian soil that included the MNCs, local players as well as Chinese brands. Similarly, for tablet business in 2012-13, the market saw more than 50 brands that included home grown players like Micromax and Karbonn, MNCs like Apple and Samsung, and many Chinese brands, luring the Indian customers.

And irrespective of brands, quality, and durability, Indian customers adopted this new age mobile-internet-enabled device with open arms. Though this digital device was new for them, Indian customers with varied expectations and requirement did not hesitate much in doing some experiment to find out how it helps them.

This was evident from the fact that the Indian tablet industry grew by 104% to touch `4,098 crore in FY13, compared to `2,013 crore in FY12.

Vendors in the Field

Samsung and Apple retained their #1 and #2 positions, respectively, in FY13 too. Samsung's Galaxy Tab in varied models helped the company to drive success. Besides, the company saw a good traction in some sectors like education, retail, and healthcare where devices like tablets are set to play a big role in the near future. Samsung's revenues stood at `1,999 crore, as compared to `1,109 crore last year, a rise of around 80%. It holds a market share of 48.8%. The success of Samsung can be attributed to multiple factors like timely entry into the Indian market, quality products within affordable range, and compelling marketing and branding campaigns. The Korean major ruled the Indian devices market in FY2012-13.

In the second place, it was Apple which continued to woo the market by its ever evolving features and niche offerings, notwithstanding its iconic brand pull. The Cupertino-based company clocked revenues worth `823 crore, against `442 crore, a rise of 86%. With this, the company enjoys a market share of 20.1% The growth of Apple in the Indian market happened probably because of the company's changed attitude towards the world's fastest growing market.

Its evident from disruptive marketing strategies like EMI schemes and exchange offers.

Micromax, which has been giving tough fights to all its competitors for the last four years in mobile phone space, did well in tablet business too. The company grew almost 300%, 294% to be precise, to clock revenues of `201 crore in FY13, compared to `51 crore in FY12. Its Funbook series has been doing wonders for the company since its launch. Though the first two quarters were difficult for the company, the next six months made up for the loss. It commanded a market share of almost 5%.

Besides these top three, the fourth place holder in VOICE&DATA 100 survey, Karbonn Mobiles perhaps performed the best among all the tablet players. Just one year of operations in the tablet space and the company raked in `112 crore of revenues. When the company launched its first tablet model Karbonn Smart Tab, it was one of the best tablets available in the market with all the advanced features and at a price that's perfectly suited the Indian budget customers, who wanted to use a tablet but wished not to splurge. At present, Karbonn Mobiles has a market share of 2.7%.

 

But the tablet that really shook the Indian perspective about tablets was the Aakash tablet manufactured by Datawind. It was touted as the world's cheapest tablet, and the Goverment of India choose this tablet as its pet project which it claimed would help India bridge the digital divide. Though many ups and downs come in the way of Datawind in terms of goof ups in delivery, experts being apprehensive about its quality, etc, the company performed well in FY2013 to clocked revenues worth `103 crore with a market share of 2.5%,and is placed fifth in the survey table.

 

What Drove this Growth

The growth of tablets happened and is growing day by day because the hunger for acquiring a mobile phone is dying down. Plus, this new device is offering almost all the features that a bulky, more expensive laptop was offering. However, what the traditional laptops were unable to offer is what being offered by the tablets-the personal touch. Today's generation is now glued to the social media-thanks to the mobile phones, but the introduction of tablets pushed the envelope little farther by offering bigger display, more storage space, and faster or equivalent processor speed. All this combined helping the users in carrying the device anywhere and let them in accessing their favourite movie or video, and getting them connected to their virtual world through social media networks.

 

The second driving factor was the differentiation it created over its smaller brother-the mobile phone, for adoption. It could be a reality or a marketing strategy, but the tablet scored over the mobile phone in terms of acceptance among educational institutes. The taboo factor that mobile phones still have in educational institutes is no more there for tablets. In fact, educational institutes, who have traditionally banned the use of mobile phones in school premises, have distributed tablets to their students, for free or at discounted price. It is being marketed as well used as an enabler of bridging that ‘digital device'.

Even though, the tablet ecosystem is at a nascent stage, the proliferation of tablets is expected to increase significantly with the launch of faster data technologies and growing awareness among customers.