Tab shipments in India dip 11% in 2017 to 3.2 mn units: IDC

Tablet PC shipments in India declined 11 per cent to 3.2 million units in 2017, hurt by fall in demand in the consumer segment, as per research firm IDC.
Shipments tumbled 32 per cent to 717,000 units for the three-month period ended December 2017 from the preceding quarter and were flat when compared with the year-ago period, IDC said in a report.
"The strong demand from commercial segment has marginalised the overall decline to an early double-digit number. However, the consumer segment witnessed a consecutive decline for the second straight year," IDC said.
It added that during the fourth quarter, the commercial segment declined by 35 per cent after a "big spike in Q3 2017 and completion of the Gujarat state government tablets deal". Compared to the year-ago period, the segment saw a strong 75 per cent growth.

Jaipal Singh, Senior Market Analyst at IDC India, said government buying will continue to drive the momentum in tablet category in 2018.
"The continued focus of Government of India on Digital India will invite more government departments to participate in digitalising their processes which will further spur growth in this category," he said.
Also, sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), pharmaceutical, automobile, and hospitality will continue to buy more tablets as they progress on standardising their points of sale (POS) and know your customer (KYC) operations, Singh noted.
Lenovo dominated the tab market in India in the December quarter with 26.1 per cent share, followed by iBall (18.5 per cent), Samsung (16.7 per cent), Apple (10.9 per cent) and Datawind (7.3 per cent).