Datawind has emerged as the largest tablet vendor in India during the last quarter of 2015, even as the overall tablet market shrunk by over 18%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC).
But the bigger story here is the fact that the market leader now is a company that does not have a tablet device that costs more than Rs 5,000.
While Samsung saw a fall of over 8% over the last quarter, Datawind’s shipments almost doubled compared to the same quarter last year. IDC attributes this success to “cost benefits through local manufacturing, free internet bundled tablets, higher online presence”.
Interestingly, Datawind’s success also reflects the fact that most of the tablets being sold in India are now in the budget segment. While the share of high-end tablets have remained more or less flat in this past few quarters, the sub $100 segment almost doubled to become close to half the market. And in that segment Datawind would have a dominating share.
Datawind CEO Sunit Singh Tuli told IndiaxExpress.com that most of the other vendors in the entry segment for tablets have lost interest because of the depleting margins. “We on the other hand have now grown to R400 crore from about R10 crore some time back,” he told indianexpress.com. Tuli says that while there has been good numbers from enterprise buyers, it’s been online sales that have worked for him in this quarter.
“The middle range for tablets is shrinking and the numbers are going to tablets priced under R5,000. And all our tabs are in this segment,” says Tuli, adding that the market share of the tablets that cost more that R30,000 has been static to a large extent.
Source: financialexpress.com
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