The global tablet market may be declining at an alarming rate, but that's not the case in India, thanks apparently to government deals. A study has revealed tablet shipments to the country increased in 2015, believed to be boosted by government buying.
A total of 4.4 million tablet PCs were shipped to India in 2015, a growth of 13 percent compared to 2014, according to the India Annual Tablet PC Market Review, CY 2015, published by market intelligence and consulting firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).
"The marginal rise in tablet performance could be attributed to a few government deals. However, with the rising demand for Phablets/Smartphones, the challenge for the industry would be to make it more exciting and bring in features attracting consumer segment especially, which should be other than the screen size, [sic]" said Tanvi Sharma, analyst for tablet devices at CMR, in a statement.
[Read: Smartphone shipments in India continue to rise significantly: IDC]
The study revealed Samsung, Datawind and Micromax are the leaders of India's tablet PC market in 2015 out of the 66 brands that shipped their devices to the country. It said Apple's iPad sales dipped 22 percent in number of units. Appetite for cellular-access devices has increased, with three of the four devices sold in 2015 supporting cellular Internet access technologies and 7 percent of tablets shipped during the year supporting 4G connectivity.
Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst at CMR Telecoms Practice, said 2016 would however be a challenging year for India's tablet PC market, hinting at chances of it following the global slowdown trend if the industry doesn't step up to address consumer needs.
[Read: Smartphone boom gives fillip to flash memory market in India]
"We expect 2016 to be even more challenging for the Tablet market. Other than the government support through demand creation, the industry has to evolve them as solutions for the market to grow. This is the right moment for augmentation as we expect 4G to grow its 'real' base in India and such users will be using a lot of video content for which screen size definitely matters, to the advantage of Tablets, [sic]" said Faisal.
[Read: Global smartphone sales to increase 7 percent in 2016, forecasts GfK]
The worldwide tablet market has declined steadily over the years, even as demand for smartphones and phablets increased. The International Data Corporation (IDC) has said in its report the total number of tablets shipped in 2015 stand at 206.8 million units, down 10.1 percent from 230.1 million the previous year.
