Indian tablet market to be worked upon by government, education projects : IDC

The tablet market in India, which saw a correction post the introduction of BIS regulation in July 2013, closed at 3.5 million at the end of December 2014, a decline of 15 per cent over 2013. Huge scale government and education projects, coupled with re-entry of older players in consumer segment, are expected to help the tablet market in India post in further growth this year, research firm IDC said.

"On a yearly basis, we expect 2015 to post single digit growth over 2014â?¦IDC anticipates 2015 to kick start with large government and education projects feeding the commercial segment," IDC said. The consumer space will continue to be led by the local brands and we may see re-entry of some of the older players in the top five vendor list, it added. After a strong growth in the festive third quarter, the tablet market posted 3.6 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth in October-December 2014 with 0.96 million units in shipment.
During the fourth quarter, iBall led the market with 15.6 per cent share, followed by Samsung (12.9 per cent), Datawind (9.6 per cent), Lenovo (9.4 per cent) and HP (8.7 per cent).

"Wi-Fi enabled tablets have faced a sharp decline over the quarters, losing out to comfortably connected tablets. The market is swiftly moving towards 3G connected tablets that post a double digit growth in Q4 and accounted for about 60 per cent of the total shipments," said IDC. Also , 4G tablets are expected to pick up pace as more service providers rollout their LTE spectrum by second half of 2015, it added.