Around 0.91 million tablet units were shipped to the Indian market during January - March 2013, a significant 158.96% increase from 0.35 million tablet shipments registered in the same quarter last year but a marginal 17.57% decrease quarter-on-quarter, according to CyberMedia Research. Methodology: CMR uses the term shipments to describe the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. In the case of handsets imported into the country it represents the number leaving the first warehouse to OEMs, distributors and retailers. The company does not track the number of handsets brought on their person by individual passengers landing on Indian soil from overseas destinations or grey market handsets. As per the report, the tablets shipped in the country were from 53 domestic and international vendors, however, only nine vendors shipped in volumes of more than 20,000 units during the period. Datawind Leads Tablet Segment: For the quarter, Datawind took the top spot in the country, accounting for 15.3% of the total shipments of tablets, followed by Micromax which accounted for 12.3% of the total shipments and Apple which accounted for 11.7% of the total shipments. Note that Datawind numbers excludes the sales of Aakash tablets to Govt. of India. CMR India noted that top three vendors accounted for 39.3% of the total tablets shipped, while the top five vendors accounted for 58.9% of the total tablets shipped. One of the interesting thing we noticed over the quarter is that how top three tablet vendors vary considerably over the previous quarter. While Micromax lead…
