The Tablet PC Wars – More Choice for Consumers

Kindle Fire HD

Outside of Smartphones, tablet PCS (or simply tablets) is another personal device category that is seeing a lot of action. The recent release of Kindle Fire HD has heated up the wars between tablet makers – to the general delight, but sometime confusion, of tablet enthusiasts.  Starting originally as an e-book reader, Kindle soon expanded into the tablet territory, mostly to keep up with changing consumer tastes and demands. Circa 2012, Kindle Fire has been frequently touted as an iPad killer – though that promise never materialized.

Apple iPad

When Apple launched its iPad way back in 2010, it started a whole new category of tablets. Strictly speaking, tablet PCs had already been around for some time, but the category achieved recognition and sales success only with iPad. Backed by its design, user interface and some good old marketing push, helped in no small measure by Apple’s formidable reputation, iPad soon came to define the category – taking as much as 90% of the market.

However, the success of the iPad inspired many other manufacturers, and tablets suddenly became ubiquitous. The premium pricing of the iPad provided a valuable opening for makers, and we have seen a veritable deluge of models in the affordable tablet category.

Samsung Galaxy Tab

Samsung Galaxy Tab is another notable success story in the tablet PC category – its multi touch user interface and affordability contributing to its increasing popularity. Samsung found another success in this field – though this came as a bit of surprise to everyone, Samsung included. It’s Galaxy Note – called phablet (a portmanteau of phone and tablet) by avid users – proved to be very popular with users, and recently a new version was introduced – Samsung Galaxy Note 2.

Though and extremely popular and useful device, the uptake of iPad was, and still is, quite limited in India. One of the primary reasons for that is its premium pricing – in the region of Rs 40,000 – combined with absence of some key features has proved to be a dampener for general users. This problem has been quite admirably utilized by other brands in the computer peripherals industry. Realizing that the Indian user is very sensitive to pricing, these makers have come out with cheaper tablet versions – with the result that the user is now virtually spoilt for choice.

Ubislate - Akash Tablet

So, now we have tablets priced as low as RS 6,000 – 7,000 available in the market. And some of the models are quite decent – providing credible performance that would answer the basic needs of most the general users. Of course, the growth in cheap tablets has been boosted by Android, which makes for affordability, and the customer is already familiar with the interface from his Smartphone.

The Indian context is unique, since we have also tried very cheap tablets that would be affordable for the lower middle class, and even rural users. The government blessed initiative, Akaash, started with a lot of promise, though some initial hiccups have impeded the progress a bit. If eventually, the experiment with Akaash succeeds, it will become a great case study in adapting a great technology for the betterment of masses.