India Tablet Market Slows Down as Annual Shipments Dip 3.1% in 2016

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According to International Data Corporation (IDC), India tablet market inclusive of slate and detachables ended the year 2016 with total shipments of 3.7 million units with a marginal annual drop of 3.1%. “Shipments decline as the consumer demand for tablets continues to shrink. However, commercial shipments grew over 35% annually managing to offset declining consumer shipments to a large extent” says Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, IDC India.

In CYQ4 2016, total tablet shipments in India was 0.82 million units with a sharp 19.6% drop over CY Q32016 and 4.3% over the same period last year. This is primarily due to seasonal decline after festive spike in Q3 and demonetization limiting the consumer sales in the last quarter of the year.

According to Karthik J , Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India, “India’s declining tablet market saw few emerging trends in 2016. Detachables category grew annually by a healthy 30.7% driven by demand coming from both consumer and commercial segments. Detachables shipments is led by Acer which accounted for almost one fourth of the product category followed by Apple’s iPad Pro. 4G based tablets ramped sharply accounting for almost one fourth of total tablet shipments in 2016 against a mere 6% in the previous year.”

Top 5 Vendor Highlights

Datawind: Datawind retains leadership position in Indian tablet market despite 16% drop in shipments over previous quarter. Datawind clocked over a million units of shipments in 2016. With low average ASP of around $52 and free internet access, vendor has been gaining market share catering to the untapped first time buyers from deeper pockets of India.

Samsung: Samsung sustains its second position with 17.4 percent market share. Samsung shipments declined 21.6% sequentially in CY Q4 2016 mainly due to poor consumer sales while commercial saw healthy growth. Samsung is likely to strengthen its commercial business and detachable portfolio with new product launches in 2017.

Lenovo: Lenovo pips iBall to take third place in CY Q42016 with 16.9% market share. Commercial segment focus has helped vendor shipments grow 9.5% over previous quarter and 17.5 percent year-on-year. In CY Q4 2016 consumer shipments also grew catering to demand from online festivals.

iBall: iBall slipped to fourth place as shipments dip sharply by 20.6 percent sequentially in Q4 2016. However, iBall shipments grew 34% year-on-year. iBall leads the 4G tablets shipments among Indian vendors with almost half of vendor’s shipments coming from LTE based devices.

Apple: Apple makes it to top 5 after a long time as shipments grew 16% over previous quarter and 17% over Q42015. While iPad air 2 remained the top selling model for Apple constituting half its total shipments, iPad pro accounted for 22.7% of India’s total detachable category in 2016.

IDC India Forecast

Consumer demand for tablets decline is expected to continue in coming years as relevance of the category fails to exist in the era of large screen smartphones. However, commercial shipments to balance the consumer decline to an extent. "Recently, there is an increase in adoption of larger screen tablets in commercial segment we expect this to grow further in coming quarters. Detachables are expected to continue with healthy double digit growth in 2016," adds Karthik.

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About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading media, data and marketing services company.