India’s tablet market grows to 3.11 million in 2012

Reinforcing the increasing popularity of smart devices in the Indian market, new data has shown that India sold 3.11 million tablets in 2012.
Last year saw 72 vendors shipping tablets 3.11 million tablets within India, according to CMR, with Samsung, Micromax and Apple emerging market leaders. The dominant OS even for tablets was Android, followed by iOS.

Selling like hot cakes. Reuters

“The year 2012 and particularly the last two quarters (3Q 2012 and 4Q 2012) were significant for the India Tablets market. We have seen the market for these devices grow substantially in 2012, particularly in the second half which made up for over 70 percent of the total sales,” Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Telecoms Analyst, CMR said, commenting on the results.
In the fourth quarter of 2012 alone (October-December), India sold 1.09 million tablets, bringing the total number of tablet shipments in 2012 to 3.11 million, according to the report by Cyber Media Research for tablet devices announced today. The last quarter of 2012 accounted for 35.33 percent of the total shipments for the entire year.
The last year, also saw an emergence of the new ‘Phablet’ category—which is a marriage of a phone and a tablet device which is between 5 and 7 inches— and Samsung Note registered the inception of the new segment.
In 2012, ‘Phablets’ constituted around 16.5 percent of total sales and this trend is expected to strengthen in the coming quarters. Moreover, the user profiles, market dynamics and the product orientation of ‘Phablets’ are very different from that for tablets.
For the last year, all devices that had a size of five inches and above were considered tablets. But beginning this calendar year, 2013, only those devices which are seven inches and larger will be considered tablets.