Apple and Samsung dominate India's nascent tablet market, with the iPad alone having a 51% share in 2011, research shows.
ABI Research estimates that Samsung was in second place with a 24% share. RIM's fire-sale of PlayBook tablets meanwhile helped the company take third place with a 10.4% share.
The research shows that tablet adoption has to date been slow, with just 390,000 units shipped during 2011.
By contrast, CyberMedia Research has estimated that 166 million mobile phones were shipped in India during the first 11 months of the year.
But ABI Research forecasts that the local tablet market will pick up soon, growing at a CAGR of 71% through to 2017. By this time, shipments will have grown to nearly 10 million units per year.
“Although there is lot of buzz in the Indian market, media tablets are yet to demonstrate their value proposition to Indian consumers,” research analyst Aishwarya Singh said.
Although multiple tablet makers are introducing sub-$200 tablets, simply lowering the price is not enough to demonstrate tablets' value to the mass-market, Singh said.
If too many low-cost handsets are launched with sub-par hardware and software specifications, it may sour the user experience.
But domestic handset makers such as Micromax may be in a position to develop tablets both at a price-point and with a feature set that appeals to mainstream consumers, Singh added.