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| Edited By: Sreejiraj Eluvangal |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 11, 2018, 03:48 AM IST
The world-wide iPad revolution of 2010 may have bypassed Indian consumers, but the new year seems ready to roll out with some serious tablet goodness.
Close on the heels of Samsung announcing it was prepping a series of tablets for the first half, Dell and Acer - the no 1 & no 3 PC brands - have also announced aggressive roll-out plans for the emerging segment. These are in addition to reported plans by others like LG and Motorola to soon enter the segment.
"We will introduce a number of tablets by March, ranging from 4.8 inches to 10 inches," says S Rajendran, chief marketing officer of India's number one light-notebook brand, Acer.
Dell's Amit Midha, chairman for South Asia and Greater China says his firm has already started shipping a new 7-inch tablet, adding to the 5-inch phone-cum-tablet launched three months ago. "We will also launch a 10-inch model early next year," he adds.
Going by early indications, however, branded tablets are likely to be a costly affair. While the iPad costs around Rs32,000 in India, both the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab and the 5-inch Dell streak - the only tablets in the country from big brands - are also priced in the Rs32,000-35,000 range.
In contrast, unbranded or locally branded tablets - made in China -are available in the Rs9,000-24,000 range. Bangalore-based Notion Ink, for example, was offering a tablet with comparable or even superior specifications to the iPad at around Rs20,000. Similarly, OlivePad, a 3G-enabled 7-inch tablet claiming full day battery is available for around Rs22,000 in the market.
However, the entry of big brands are expected to increase the 'acceptability' of the form-factor among consumers - not least due to the associated heavy advertising. They also have a different strategy compared to the Indian brands, borrowed from Apple's play-book.
"We are looking at various media service providers to launch an India-specific tablet solution," says Midha, echoing comments of Dipesh Shah, head of India R&D who too is focused on tying up with content providers like newspaper houses and music and multi-media copyright owners.
The bigger brands believe that providing a complete service, including music, movies, news and an application store will be crucial to getting consumers to go the extra mile. Indeed, Midha is in talks with telecom operators to bundle 3G connectivity and subscription plans with the instrument.
Some see the rise of the tablet as a logical next step from that of the netbook that has held sway in the last two years. While Midha dismisses netbooks as a passing fad, he sees tablets as a "potent architectural shift in personal computing" - marketing talk for the next big thing.
Midha sees it as the consumer counterpart of the rise of the cloud. As large clusters of servers make powerful desktop and laptop computers redundant, Midha believes consumers will increasingly shift to low-power, portable computing devices - tablets.
Rajendran of Acer, which commands around 36% of the global marketshare for netbooks, however believes that netbooks will continue to thrive.
"Tablets will be relevant as a second device, not as the first PC," he says, pointing out that the world's most popular operating system -Windows- is yet to be adapted to run on tablets.
Nearly all the tablets work on ARM designs - less powerful than the typical PC architecture - forcing them to run operating systems like Android, Linux or Apple's iOS.
