India tablet market shipments dropped by 32.8 per cent for the first quarter of 2014 at 0.78 million units due to lack of new buyers in the market, according to research from the International Data Corporation (IDC).

“Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) compliance is certainly hurting the white-box market…At an overall level, branded vendors were unable to capitalise on the space left vacant by the erosion from white-box and smaller vendors,” says Karan Thakkar, Senior Market Analyst of Tablets, Enterprise Client Devices and PC Monitors, IDC India.

Labelling rules According to BIS’ amended labelling rules, companies have to screen print, emboss or engrave labels on products and packaging material. The revised labelling rules also mandate font size of the letters (12 or one-fourth the size of the brand name, or whichever is lower). Most of the tablet vendors import shipments. Any alteration to the hardware design of the product has to be done at the source location, which in turn will lead to supply chain management issues. Samsung leads the tablet market in India, followed by Apple and Micromax. The market for tablets has gone into hibernation because of the growing usage of large-screen smartphones, IDC said.

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