India tablet market grows 6% in 2020, Lenovo leads: CyberMedia

This was driven by demand due to work-from-home and online education

Driven by demand due to work-from-home and online education amid the pandemic, the India tablet market grew six per cent year-on-year (YoY) in 2020 with Lenovo leading the market with a 39 per cent share, said a new report from CyberMedia Research (CMR) on Thursday.

Lenovo, which replaced Samsung at the top, saw its commercial business registering robust growth, driven by government and education sectors, showed CMR's Tablet PC Market Report Review for 2020.

It maintained good score on tablet market demand in the last 14 consecutive quarters. Lenovo Tab M10 (HD) series garnered 10 per cent market share.

Samsung was placed second in the market leaderboard with 30 per cent market share. Samsung launched several tablets in 2020, including the Tab A7 LTE and WiFi version, Tab S7, S7 Plus and S6 lite.

Across all the tablet launches from Samsung, the Tab A7 LTE and WiFi was the most successful, accounting for a massive 13 per cent share across the Samsung tablet portfolio.

Interestingly, during the course of the year, a premium brand such as Apple replaced a strong value-for-money brand such as iBall at the third position with 17 per cent market share.

"Amidst the pandemic, opportunities and demand created by work-from-home (WFH) and learning-from-home (LFH) created a strong uptick in the Indian tablet industry in Year 2020," Menka Kumari, Analyst-Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR, said in a statement.

"Exciting deals during festive season further boosted Indian tablet market in the year. A new shift in dependency over tablets in healthcare sector, enterprises and home usage backed the tablet market growth."

As uncertainties owing to the Covid-19 pandemic continue to persist, Apple has a good opportunity to increase its market share in the overall tablet market, said the report.

With the launch of Apple iPad 8, iPad Air and iPad Pro contributed to this market growth with 44 per cent of the overall iPad shipments during this year.

The data showed that Apple also had the largest share in the premium segment - over Rs 30,000.

Apple iPad demand spiked through CY2020.

CMR said it anticipates an overall growth of shipments around 5-10 per cent in 2021, with a slower than expected Q1 2021 due to muted consumer demand.

Tablet demand is expected to pick-up in Q2 of this year driven by the education sector and digital transformation.

--IANS

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