Companies such as Lava, Micromax, Zen, Olive, G’Five, Acer and Fly among others will attempt to replicate their success in the tablet PC space by offering products at large discounts compared to an Apple iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab, targeting the mid-income group.
While Apple, which launched the iPad last week in India, and its primary competitor Samsung are largely restricted to metros and some big cities, the smaller handset players say they plan to ride their strong distribution network and high retailers’ commission, especially in rural India, to capture a large share of the tablet pie.
Executives with these companies say their products will be a match for the likes of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab as they will all use Google’s Android operating system. Analysts predict that Android tablets are set to get a boost this year as Google is set to release is Android 3.0, aka Honeycomb, a version of the smartphone operating system designed for tablets.
UK-based research firm Strategy Analytics in a report earlier this month said that Android-based tablets had captured a 22% share of the world’s tablet market last quarter, reducing Apple’s dominance to 75% of all fourth quarter sales when compared to 95% share in the third quarter, when its iPad accounted for 4.2 million of the 4.4 million tablets sold.
