Apple dominates in Indian tablet market

Despite the launch of a series of low-cost tablets Indians seem to prefer buying high-cost branded tablet personal computers.

The trend is obvious from the sales of top three players – Apple, Samsung and RIM who now enjoy nearly 85 per cent of the market share in tablet PCs.

Apple's iPad continued be the top seller in the Indian tablet personal computer market with a 51-per cent market share in 2011.

Samsung was able to extend its handset segment success to the tablet segment, with its Galaxy Tab, which allowed the Korean major to take the second spot with a 24- per cent market share, according to a report by the US-based ABI Research. 

Indian consumers also showed their preference for  RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook following significant price cuts, thanks to which it emerged as the third-largest player with a 10.4 per cent market share. In India, tablet shipments for 2011 were estimated at  0.39 million units, which was a very small fraction of the nearly 65 million shipped globally. (See: Tablet PC's steal the show as PC shipments rise only by 1.9% in Q1) 

However, the growth of the Indian tablet market has been projected at 71 per cent with shipments expected to grow to 9.66 million units in 2017.