Tablet shipments in India up 8% at 3.8 mn units in 2015

Tablet shipments in India were up 8 per cent to touch 3.8 million units in 2015, recovering from a sharp dip seen in 2014, according to research firm IDC.

However, according to the market research firm, during the fourth quarter ended December 2015, tablet shipment were down by 10 per cent to 0.86 million units over the same period last year (0.96 million). Shipments fell 18.7 per cent as against July-September 2015 quarter, IDC said in a report yesterday.

According to IDC, 2016 would see a marginal growth as consumer demand for tablets hits saturation. The commercial segment was however, expected to witness healthy double digit growth this year.

"With each of the previous two quarters clocking over a million units of shipments, total tablet market for 2015 managed to post a growth of 8.2 percent at 3.8 million units, recovering from a sharp dip in 2014," it added.

According to the report, detachables started to ramp up gradually in 2015, especially second quarter onwards. Detachable shipments shot up sharply, although it was in comparison to smaller volumes in 2014.

According to IDC,Q4 was also the first quarter  in 2015, to have detachables from all three major OS platforms.

Meanwhile, Datawind, the maker of Aakash tablet, had sold the maximum number of tablets in India in the last quarter of 2015, the report added. In its latest report, the research firm said that Datawind got the top spot in Q4 2015 with 20.7 percentage share while Samsung had 15.8 per cent share. Micromax, Lenovo and iBall were other three notable tablet players of India with 15.5 per cent, 13.8 per cent and 10 per cent share respectively.

"With continued focus on entry level i.e. sub $100 tablet segment, shipments almost doubled year-on-year in 2015 Q4. Cost benefits through local manufacturing, free internet bundled tablets, higher online presence in Q4 2015 were few key factors which worked in favour of the vendor (Datawind)," IDC said in its press release.