The growth in the tablet market in India has outpaced that of mobiles, according to survey of Snapdeal.com, a well-known online retailer. According to the survey data, tablets’ sales growing at the rate of 33 per cent month-on-month compared to 11 per cent growth of the later.
The study, named Online Shopping Trends, observed that in the online space, mobiles and tablets are the most searched and most bought products in India.
While both the mobile and tablets segment grew rapidly, in terms of price, India continues to remain a low budget market with 80 per cent of the mobiles sold being priced below Rs 5,000 while 95 per cent of the tablets sold being below Rs 10,000.
In terms of preference, smartphones have grown a lot and now account for 23 per cent of the online market share with the rest being feature phones (earlier it was less than 5 per cent) on Snapdeal.com.
The online trends are also different from other channels with Micromax being the leading brand followed by Nokia. Samsung, Sony Ericsson and HTC are the other three in terms of top 5 brands in sales rankings. Overall, Samsung is the leading brand which means that people buying from physical stores look at different set of requirements.
In under-Rs 10,000 tablet category, Micromax has emerged as the clear leader with its Funbook range tablets being the highest selling as well as the most searched tablets on Snapdeal.com.
However, other Indian tablet brands like Zync, Penta and Intex are also now finding greater acceptability amongst the online shoppers, at least on Snapdeal.com.
Almost 50 per cent of the sales of mobiles and tablets came from consumers residing in Tier-I cities which is in fact surprising given that the rest of the 50 per cent comes from smaller towns and cities where internet penetration is not very high.
In term of operating system, Symbian still leads the pack with 46 per cent share though Android is not far behind with 44 per cent share. This means that iOS, Windows Phone, Blackberry and Bada account for less than 10 per cent. In the tablet space, Android is the most preferred OS in Tablets with a market share of 94 per cent, which is not surprising given that most tablets bought in India are low cost where Android is the only option.