Tablets are the latest craze in India and while we certainly hope that tablet sales will make up for the PC revolution which India had missed out on.
As per a recent study (based on data from November 2010-March 2011), Samsung leads the tablet race in India with whopping 84.7% market share as opposed to Apple which holds only 5.9%.
| Vendor | Market Share |
| Samsung | 84.7% |
| Olive | 8.2% |
| Apple | 5.9% |
| Others | 2.4% |
| Base | 85,000 Units |
Much of this is owing to distribution and marketing to price conscious crowd.
Having said that, market share in tablet business doesn’t mean much. If you look at the recently launched Android tablets in India, they are just a case of cheap devices bought-in-bulk from China and offer no user experience.
Moreover, very few tablet manufacturers are geared to sell to enterprise customers (like restaurants/sales force etc) and unless that happens, we’d recommend you to stick to branded tablets (i.e. if not iPad, go for Galaxy Tab).
Like other markets, Apple doesn’t need to worry about the ‘device’ market share – the business of tablet starts once the user has bought the tablet and Apple knows this very well. For other device manufacturers, success is all about selling the device – but for apple, that’s the first touch point with the customer. What happens afterwards is a different story (heard of apps?).
What’s your opinion?
