Samsung yesterday launched Samsung Galaxy Tab S in India, which belongs to the premium segment category. Samsung soon to launch 4G LTE based tablet in India. These 4G based tablet will also fall into the premium segment. The new tablet will support both the FDD and TDD variants of LTE.
For Indian market, these are the first tablets to run on LTE-FDD technology that uses wireless broadband to allow customers access high speed 4G Internet services. The new tablet to be launched in a few months will support both FDD-LTE on the 1800 MHz spectrum band and TDD-LTE on the 2300 MHz band, Mohammad Asim Warsi said.
“Our observation is that the Indian tablet market size is growing. The number we see, born out of syndicated research, is upwards of 20% year-on-year,” Warsi said. According to him, Samsung measures purchases or consumption in the market.
Samsung was the first one to launch a tablet in the India market. For a long time, Apple and Samsung were the two prominent players in the country’s tablets market. According to the International Data Corporation, the India tablet market shipments for Q1 2014 stood at 0.78 million units, representing a year-on-year drop of -32.8% over Q1 2013. The drop was primarily due to lack of new buyers in the market.
Tablet devices have been recognized as a key bottleneck in the development of the 4G ecosystem. However, the indications are that more devices will become available in the first half of 2015. India would also need the devices to be interoperable across the FDD, TDD, Wi-Fi and 3G networks. Besides Samsung, Huawei is also planning to launch 4G devices.
This 4G LTE device from Samsung will feature an 8.4-inch and 10.5-inch versions, and will be priced Rs 37,800 and Rs 44,800, respectively. The device shall be available from the second week of July. Samsung clearly led the tablet market in India. The strong performance of the brand in Q1 was supported by the good presence it held in the 7-8 inch screen size category.
