Lenovo leads India Tablet Market With 37% Share

While the India tablet market declined 18 percent in 2019 compared to a year ago, Lenovo has retained its dominance for the 10th consecutive quarter, grabbing 37 percent market share in 2019, a report from CyberMedia Research (CMR) said on Thursday.

In terms of share in the India tablet market in 2019, Samsung came second with 16.7 percent share, followed by iBall (13.9 percent), Apple (12.4 percent) and Datawind (5.4 percent), said the report titled “Tablet PC Market Report Review for 4Q CY2019”

However, among the top five brands, only Lenovo and Apple registered growth in 2019. While Lenovo registered 28.1 percent year-over-year growth in 2019, Apple grew 12.3 percent year-over-year.

“During the course of 2019, the average sales value (ASV) for tablets in India increased, indicating a latent demand from enterprise players for variants with higher-end specifications. While Lenovo grew 28 percent YoY in 2019, all other tablet brands saw their market share erode, with the notable exception of Apple,” Kanika Jain, Manager, Client Device Research, Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR, said in a statement.

While the tablet market declined 18 percent YoY, 4G Tablets grew sequentially by 22 percent year-over-year, said the report.

As per the report, shipments of tablets with 6-7 inch displays constituted 39 percent of the overall shipments in the India market. On the other hand, tablets with 10-inch and above displays contributed to 35 percent of the shipments.

Lenovo continued to show innovation with launch of E, M, P & V series tablets. Its M10 (HD & FHD) series garnered 16 percent market share.

Samsung launched several tablets in 2019, including the Tab A 10.1, Tab A8.0, Tab S5e & S6. However, Samsung’s tablet shipments declined by 24 percent year-over-year. Across all the tablet launches from Samsung, the Tab A 10.1 was the most successful, accounting for a massive 32 percent share across the Samsung tablet portfolio.

iBall regained the third position for 2019, but declined 17 percent year-over-year.

Apple’s newly launched iPad 7, Air 2019 and Mini 2019 series helped it to register a year-over-year growth of 12 percent during the year.

In 2020, the tablet market is likely to start on a slower note, according to CMR.

Given that Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) control 40 percent of the Indian tablet market, the reliance on China would see a negative impact on overall tablet shipments.

Though OEMs typically stock tablet inventories to tide over the Chinese New Year holidays, the coronavirus outbreak-caused disruption has led to an extended closure.

This, in turn, implies the chances for a potential dent in tablet shipments in Q2 2020 of upto 6-8 percent, according to the projections by CMR.

“Traditionally, Q1 has been a slow quarter for the tablet market in India owing to the Chinese New Year holidays. However, with the coronavirus outbreak impacting manufacturing supply chain, we are, in effect, looking at an unexpected situation, wherein we believe, tablet shipments would see a further dip towards end of Q1, and more realistically in Q2 2020,” said Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group, CMR.―Newsd