Tap the Tab: Potential of Tablet market in India



Apple’s first generation iPad went on sale in the US market during April 2010. As many Indian consumer’s had expected Apple to treat Indian market as a dumping ground for its old generation products, Apple iPad  made its way to the Indian shores in Jan 2011-  exactly nine months after its US release. So what made the Cupertino Giant come up with the launch of 2nd generation iPad in India just after a month’s release in US market?

With the launch of 3G services across all telecom operators post Jan 2011 in a phased manner it would have being foolish of them to wait for few more months to dump the iPad 2 to Indian consumers. Until end of March 2011 there was no official announcement from Apple about launching iPad 2 in India and come end of April 2011 it had already hit Indian stores, 20,000 units shipped to India in the first lot sold out flat in 72 hours and yes this “rather” surprising launch did left a lot of first generation iPad customers miffed.

Globally there is heated debate going on already amongst technology experts around the potential threat tablet PC market carries in denting PC and laptop sales, in this race Apple iPad is clearly leading the pack at this moment however you never know if the game changing tablet could just be lurking around in near future in case Apple is caught unaware. So what potential could a tablet device have in changing the landscape of computing hardware in our country?

A lot of factors would play an important role for Tablet PC market to thrive in India, of what is believed by end of year 2011 tablet PC market in India could come close to a million in terms of sales and it’s headed towards an exponential growth over the next few years.

Pricing: Mainstream tablet launches by Apple, Samsung, Acer, RIM and Motorola start a price range where high end smartphones peak on their pricing, so it is very important that the consumer is getting a significant value add on the entry level product in the tablet category which acts as a buying motive for the consumer else it would be difficult for these top notch companies to bring in new consumers post the tablet buying hysteria has settled a bit.

Olive telecom is one of the Indian company which launched India’s first 3G Android OS based tablet in August 2010, companies like Karbonn, Lava, Beetel and Spice telecom which stole the thunder from heavyweights like Nokia and Sony Ericcson in the mobile handset market are already warming up to jump on to the tablet bandwagon as well.

It is then the pricing would get more important because these companies are not targeting Apple or Samsung as competitors, they are anticipating to repeat their success by reaching out to the non-metro and rural market at an attractive price point.

Awareness/Marketing: Tablet PC market is at a very nascent stage in India currently and it would require good amount of effort from companies to develop an Ecosystem around tablet PC as a device that would cater to needs of various sectors starting with education where it has a huge potential, spreading across Entertainment, Retail, Media etc.

Providing localized content with vernacular customization also would be an important factor in creating market for tablet PC, because the shift in consumer preference towards tablet PC as a computing device has stemmed from its biggest strength which has being ease of use, no doubts the Queen of England too could not resist having an iPad 2 ordered for herself.

Both Android and Apple’s iOS platforms have a huge library of applications which enhance the functionality of Tablet PC in many ways helping consumers improve their productivity, feeding their desire to access information on the go, allowing them to stay connected via 3G through video and voice calls, sharing stuff and if this was not enough the gaming capability of a tablet PC cannot go unnoticed.

Tablet game developers are already churning out low cost, high quality games which could develop into a huge potential for gaming industry to the kind of success mobile gaming has had in India.

After sales support: A very important factor that no company doing business in India can afford to overlook, as Indian consumers we are known to be quite demanding on the price we pay to buy our products and companies like Apple would have to ensure that they have a full-fledged after sales support team active in India, having a skeleton support staff with some toll free number for customer support does go long way in building brand image.