Buoyed by improving business sentiment, the tablet market in India is showing signs of recovery with 9 per cent growth in sales at 0.85 million units in the April-June quarter, research firm IDC on Monday said.
Tablet sales stood at 0.78 million units in the previous, January-March, quarter.
On annual basis, sales declined over 34 per cent from 1.31 million units in the second quarter of 2013.
Samsung continued to top the list with 19 per cent share, followed by domestic electronics major Micromax (14 per cent) and US-based Apple (9 per cent). Other key players in the tally included Lenovo (7 per cent) and Datawind (6 per cent).
“The recovery was fuelled by multiple factors. Business sentiments have shown improvement post elections and near term prospects are anticipated to remain better too,” IDC India Senior Market Analyst Karan Thakkar said.
Further, traditional PC OEMs have started making big inroads in the tablet market and most of this success is led by leveraging their vast expanded reach through multiple distribution points, he added.
“Improved discretionary spends by end users and festive buying is expected to drive growth in the tablet market in the coming quarters. We expect this to be well supported by the optimism witnessed around enterprise IT spending in the recent past,” IDC India Research Manager (Client Devices) Kiran Kumar said.
He added that despite inconsistencies, smaller importers continue to remain successful in a highly price sensitive market and hence, branded players should be cautious of any distractions.
Android operating system continued to be the most preferred OS with 89.6 per cent.
IDC added that Windows OS is gaining ground too, with much of these volumes being driven by spurt in enterprise buying.
In terms of screen size, tablets with screen size between 7-8 inches contributed to 88 per cent of the overall market in Q2 2014.
