Tablet is still a recent phenomenon in India. It all started with Olivepad which was later followed by the launch of Samsung Galaxy Tab and iPad. Tablet hasn’t reached the mass market product status and the entry of Reliance and Airtel would change that. Beetel Magiq and Reliance 3G Tab will change the tablet market in India with aggressive pricing and on your face advertising. How did the tablet market in India fare when there were few players?
For the period between November 2010 and March 2011, 85000 tablets were sold. Of which 85% were Samsung Galaxy Tabs and 8.2% were Olivepads from Olive Telecom. Apple’s iPad has a mere 5.9% share with the rest shared between umpteen tablet brands as per CMRI.
For every iPad sold, 14 Samsung Galaxy Tabs were sold in India
Unlike what’s happening in the US and the rest of the world, tablets are still growing as a separate product category without hampering PC sales. May be because, India doesn’t yet have enough PC’s. There are 52 million PC’s in India which translates to 1 computer for every 25 Indian citizens. Though that’s a great improvement from 2006 levels, it is still less, for a country which often boasts about its IT prowess.
As many as 50 tablet models are available in India with one new model launching every week. Despite the recent spate of tablets flooding Indian markets, a mere 250,000 tablets will be sold during this year. This estimate is contrary to the earlier estimate of 1 million tablets to be sold in India.
What did Samsung do differently with its tablet? And will Reliance and Beetel tablets completely dominate the market for this quarter?