India still does not understand concept of tablets…no Adam for it!

We have been pretty dormant about Notion Ink news. There are critics and there were bouquets and Notion Ink seems to be taking them quite well. Rohan Shravan, Notion Ink’s CEO, who is tagged with Steve Jobs complex has given a detailed interview to VCCircle. There are lot of things he talked about on how Olivepad and Galaxy Tab are too big for Adam to be competing to how big the tablet market is to be dominated by a single player.

Most of the answers are candid. The answers about tablet consumption in India are candid from Shravan’s perspective but plain wrong. Here’s one of the questions :

What do you think of the tablet PCs being launched in India?
There are 3 generations of tablets. Media players, content consuming devices and content creation devices. Currently the tablets in India are just media players. Adam is more aimed at content creation and content consumption level.

The tablets in India are not just media players. There’s iPad, Olivepad and Samsung Galaxy Tab which were launched in India. Shravan himself regards Olivepad too big to impact sales. If Shravan is talking about sales then the two filters of content consumption and content creation are met for those tablets. When India can look forward for a Galaxy Tab, iPad or a Olivepad and when they are devices which encompass all three generations why isn’t India a good enough market for Adam? Not that it matters.

There are whole bunch of tablets which can be used as media players and some for content consumption. For someone to create content on a tablet and with just a tablet isn’t possible. For that tablet as a product has a long way to go. I am not sure if tablets were created to solve the content creation problem. If content creation is limited to recording videos and music then iPad and its ilk can do that. If we are talking about writing a book on a tablet, then good luck. May be Shravan was referring to the pretty paint application which they have designed for the tablet. For someone to create content on the fly, the infrastructure (read apps) should be in place. Without infrastructure, any hardware with the greatest processor on earth is useless and wouldn’t reach its intended purpose.

The argument about India not the market for tablets goes to a different dimension when we introduce the lack of content. There isn’t much Indian content to consume. India has a long way to go on the content creation outside the tablet realm, to be consumed by the audience.

This particular comment is very disturbing :

India will take its time to understand the concept of tablets and its need.

Oh yeah! Looks like Rohan Shravan is the only person in India who understood the concept of tablets and he did it very fast at a very young age. Come on, non-Notion Ink India, wake up. Understand the concept of tablets. And by India, I think, he meant the India he knows.

Who is your target customer – are you looking at rural India at all?
Those who love to create content on fly are our target customers. Rural India is not our target. Price is a big factor there.

Price is a big factor in India, not just rural India. Indians not only care about what a particular contraption can do for them but also at what price. This is where cheap talbets come in. If Reliance Industries launches a 8K tablet and bundles up a cheap data plan go with it, which it would, that is what everybody will be talking about and that is what everybody want.

Notion Ink is not playing the price game. Fair enough. But this notion of creating content on the fly, I really want to know what content are those Adam fans creating on the fly. I really do.

Source : VCCircle, Via : TechKnots