Mobility Cover Story

Cover Story

Tablet M Conference — 2012

obility presents Tablet – Conference as its cover story, as part of this conference we are bringing together some of the biggest and most innovative tablet vendors in India and discuss their strategy forward.

Participants in this conference include • Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind • Nafis Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Limited • Rajesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Micromax Informatics • Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems Ltd • Sandeep Popli, Country Manager, Go Tech Digital Pvt • Pradeep Jain, Managing Director, Karbonn Mobiles • Kapil Wadhwa, MD, Champion Computers, • Satyak Kapoor, VP, Fujezone • Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions,

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seeks. A manufacturer that can provide a stylish device, load it with various relevant features and offer it at a very competitive price point stands to gain huge traction with the Indian consumer.

This is a trend that will be surely consistent for some time to come.

HCL has been a household name of the Indian market for over 30 years, and have studied the consumer behaviour very closely which has enabled us to designed products to suit the need of the Indian consumer. Our tablets also follow the same lineage. We have been achieving robust growth and the tablet business have registered more than 2000% YoY growth in tour 2011-12 FY. We enjoy 15 per cent market share in the overall tablet market and planning to launch tablets across all price points in the value segment. We are confident of making further inroads into the market.

We have a huge retail presence across the country and the HCL tablets have been accepted well across all regions. HCL Infosystems has a widespread reach in currently more than 4000+ cities in India. We have nearly 2000 retail outlets today.

Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India.

The demand for tablets has poised phenomenally as users start to experience the limitless potential of Tablets. Users have started opting for innovative options. Tablets are portable when compared to computers and definitely more user friendly, have a bigger screen to work on, if compared to a smart phone. They also have apps which make work easier and faster. Tablets offer convenience and a better work/life balance, making it easy for employees to keep information with them and utilize business apps, no matter where they go.

• Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India.

What are some of the biggest driving forces that are set to pushing tablets sales for the country?

Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems Ltd. Some of the driving forces that are set to push the Tablet market in the country are • Usability or the user experience – a multi touch capacitive with a very good resolution • Performance- comprising of the content, connectivity, updated features such as OS, camera, apps to name a few • Affordability – the price factor, a very significant factor for the Indian market.

Other factors such as portability, USB connectivity and upgrade compatibility (memory) further add to the trends.

Another point that I would like to add here especially for the Indian market is the competitive price points that the consumer MOBILITY

Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions In the next 3 years, by 2015, Milagrow aims to have 10% market share of the 15 million Indian tablets market. I see the Milagrow brand already being respected for its high quality and innovative products and excellent customer service. We have already built a large loyal customer base. Just through the work we are doing and the partners that we are working with, such as Croma, Flipkart, Viveks, Vijay Sales, Lotus, Planet M and the rapidly expanding distribution channel, we have successfully been able to differentiate ourselves from the many fly-by-night operators who are just in the market to make a quick buck.

As mentioned above, tablets are a perfect device for anyone looking to consume and create information. They are portable, easy to carry and easy to take notes for professionals.

For students, imagine a 10kg schoolbag full of textbooks and registers being replaced by a tablet complete with ebooks and applications to take notes. On another note, tablets are the "inthing" now and if your neighbour has one, you must have one too.

Sandeep Popli, Country Manager, Go Tech Digital Pvt Our strategy is to offer not only just a vanilla tablet but a solution in the form of a tablet. And as we move forward and strengthen our operations, effective market penetration and service network would be key differentiator for us.

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“There is a special focus on studnets and creating educational content relevant for Indian students and their unique needs. A big majority of India falls in this category. We want to take technology to them and make it relevant in their lives.”

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind There are 900 million mobile phone subscribers but only 18 million broadband connections. We intend to plug this gap.. We have more than 3.5 million pre-orders for our products and we intend to fulfill them using a direct to customer fulfillment model in the coming months. The platform strategy for our products will ensure that we offer premium content in various segments to our customers in all popular Indian languages and scripts, using a business model that ensures that the content is free to use for the end customer. There will be special focus on education keeping in mind the unique needs of Indian students at different levels and in different geographies. Additionally we are focused on ensuring anywhere, anytime internet connectivity by ensuring a great internet browsing experience on India’s GPRS networks.

Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India While Tablet segment is in its early adoption stage it has been the most vibrant segment attracting a lot of product offering from various manufacturers. We launched the BlackBerry PlayBook in 2011 and further announced the PlayBook 2.0 OS upgrade few months ago.

India is an important market for Research In Motion and in order to reach out to the consumers at large our strategy has been to focus on national distribution channels and ensure that our products are available across the nation.

As a part of our marketing strategy we devised interested offers focused at the India market to make the PlayBook accessible to the masses. During Diwali, we rolled out an offer wherein any customer who bought a BlackBerry PlayBook got a BlackBerry Curve 8520 for free. The objective of this was to get more people to use the device. Furthermore, towards the end of the year the BlackBerry PlayBook was offered at a discounted rate as a part of our year end offer, which saw an immediate response leading to the device running out of stocks across the country.

Nafees Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Ltd

take technology to them and make it relevant in their lives.

Pradeep Jain, Managing Director, Karbonn Mobiles Karbonn Mobiles has at the present moment more than 1000 distributorships and 50,000 dealers which covering 90% of the country. These consumers efficiently serviced by a dedicated sales team, also employs an advanced sales tracking mechanism to pursue sales which forms an integral part of the sales & marketing strategy of the brand.

Going forward, Karbonn Mobiles has plans of creating a signature brand of stores all across the country with plans to spread its business network of distributorship across the length and breadth of the country in the times to come. Envisioning creating a diverse brand following of Karbonn Mobiles across the length and breadth of the country, Karbonn Mobiles intends to spread its network to even the remotest corner of India and thus become the preferred brand of mobility solutions across the country.

Nafis Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Limited There are 900 million mobile phone subscribers but only 18 million broadband connections are available. This gap segment is our priority. We want to create a product that creates an optimum balance between usability, performance and affordability for the Indian population. The tablets also need to have contents that are relevant to users in India and cater to their unique needs in their local languages. Our priority is to cater to web access and educational needs of the society that is unable to afford computing devices. There is a special focus on students and creating educational content relevant for Indian students and their unique needs. A big majority of India falls in this category. We want to 14 | October 2012

“The demand for tablets has poised phenomenally as users start to experience the limitless potential of Tablets.

Users have started opting for innovative options.”

Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India

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“India is an important market for Research in Motion and in order to reach out to the consumers at large our strategy has been to focus on national distribution channels and ensure that our products are available across the nation”

Rajesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Micromax Informatics Micromax believes in challenging the status quo ‘Innovation comes at a price’ so we are determined towards providing affordable devices but accompanied by technological innovations that consumers demand for. We develop products keeping in mind the needs of the consumers and do not compromise with the quality of the device. The consumers shall feel that our products have value for money. The younger generation needs technology at their fingertips. Innovation and utility will play the lead role when a consumer chooses to buy a brand.

Therefore, our strategy will be providing more of content and quality with innovation not only on the hardware side of it but the software.

Sunil Lalwani, Director, Enterprise Sales, Reaserch in Motion, India

Kapil Wadhwa, MD, Champion Computers Ans. We are following a mix of strategies to reach out to consumers . With our wide distribution network of over 3000 channel partners and 14 to reach 21% by 2014, the tablets will drive internet adoption branch offices, Champion Computers is in an enviable position specifically among the unconnected mass in the emerging to distribute its products across the country. Additionally with the markets. And hence, we see a huge market for us to grow as explosion of e-commerce in India, we have tied up with leading manufacturers to bring in a technology that will drive the next e-commerce portals to retail our products and expand our reach. phase of education in India.

We have tied up with ebay,Naptol,Snapdeal,Indiatimes and many others.

Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems A tablet packs the convenience of a laptop and smartphone Ltd. into a single device. With computing ,calling and browsing all HCL has been very strong in the Indian IT market over the possible from a since device with a larger screen and compact past three decades and has been successfully growing over the size, the consumer has a compelling reason to adopt tablets years. Though the PC market in India is vast, the tablet market instead of carrying multiple devices. Internet browsing or rich in India is still in its growing phase. Tablet/ PC manufactures media consumption is a not a very pleasant experience even in have taken certain price points in the high end category for their the best of smart phones. With increase in processor speeds, products. In India, popularity of a brand will depend not only innovative features and falling prices, we see the adoption of on the price point that it offers but also on the content and tablets would witness a significant upward trend and would become the primary device for most users in a few years. Additionally y on demand content would also “We have already built a play a very sizeable role in the increased preference large loyal customer base. for tablets over laptops.

In a fiercely competitive tablet market, how do you create the differentiation?

Rajesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Micromax Informatics Today, tablets are being extensively demanded by all groups of consumers and in every sector whether its education, retail, enterprise, hospitality, aviation etc. Such a huge demand in the market paves way for the growth of this market in India. Moreover, there is an intense competition in this space and here pricing strategy plays a very important role. With tablets coming at affordable price, tablet adoption is on a rise. Adoption of tablets will largely depend on product performance and availability of relevant content as well as affordable and widespread 3G services. With global internet penetration expected MOBILITY

Just through thes work we are doing and the partners that we are working with such as Croma, Flipkart, Viveks, Vijay Sales, Lotus Planet M and the rapidly expanding distribution channel” Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO, Milagrow Business & Knowlege Solutions

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applications. For the existing tablet players it is not only price points that have become critical but also the ability to produce feature rich and innovative tablets that will become important.

In a price conscious market like India, a gadget that provides most features in an affordable price range will encourage more usage and HCL Infosystems looks to tap into this space.

Additionally we have been an long standing local player and have studied Indian consumer behavior closely. Tablets that will gain ground in the market are the ones that provide relevance like localized applications or an extensive service support and are also an absolute value for money device. Keeping such factors we have brought the HCL ME Tab to the Indian market.

Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India.

We create the differentiation by the value and volume aspect.

Our priority has been to roll out tablets with technology and innovation at the forefront. From the build to the performance, we have focused on overall basis, so as to enable users have a superior computing experience. Our tablets are paired and primed to perfection.

Our latest tablet Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime is powered

by NVIDIA Tegra which encompasses advanced water effects, realistic textures and material display, motion blur effects, camera splash effects and all kinds of new 3D effects, offering superb 3D graphics performance previously unseen on a tablet.

Nafis Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Limited The market is surely competitive, however the customers are looking for best suited tablets in affordable range. Winket is India’s first B2C end to end Broadband solutions to access, enable & experience broadband devices. Our vision to empower people with seamless, reliable and cutting edge broadband products which promises to enrich broadband usage experience of its customers.

We see education as the primary segment driving the Indian tablet market – but the demand is not only by students; it is also being created by parents, institutions and

the government. We see this segment covering over 70% of the market.

Sandeep Popli, Country Manager, Go Tech Digital Pvt Even though tablets are not new to our country, a host of big brands have been available in the market for a long time now.

But the most important segment of the consumer which is the budget segment is being addressed only now.

Kapil Wadhwa, MD, Champion Computers Ans. Our positioning strategy is not to launch the cheapest tablet but an affordable device with quality and superior performance that delights customers. We are a completely customer centric brand and all our product innovations and decisions come from identifying consumers wants .The Wtab 7.2 delivers a very superior performance in its segment ( sub-Rs. 5000 tablet segment). We also identified the dongle compatibility issue with most tablets and decided to provide our own brand of dongles, 'WConnect' with 100% compatibility to make life of our customers easy.

Pradeep Jain, Managing Director, Karbonn Mobiles With a view of the future, Karbonn Mobiles aims to become one of the top mobile brands in the world by the year 2013.

For the same, the brand has undertaken varied investment plans which will help it in achieving the goal. Going forward, Karbonn Mobiles will expand its concerns in terms of strategic tie-ups, entrance in new markets and new launches; wherein plans are already afoot to invest 7% of revenue on R&D activities. Also, Karbonn Mobiles endeavours to enter untapped African and South-Asian countries which will help in garnering approximately 20% revenue from sales in the Smartphones and Tablets segment.

With a vision of garner a revenue generation of Rs. 2500 crores in the Financial Year 2012-13, Karbonn Mobiles plans to concentrate its investments on a greater R&D mechanism, tap engaged design modules and partnerships along with creating an envious line of smartphones and tablets which will bring in greater technological ingenuity into the market.

Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions Brands such as Milagrow that are in the tech space for the long run will continue to innovate and bring to the table industry first products. For example, Milagrow introduced back in October 2011 the “most ported out tablet” – a tablet with a SIM Card slot, a Full USB, an HDMI port, a memory card slot and a 3.5 mm audio jack, all in one. This was followed up by launching India’s only tablet specially for women which is also India’s lightest tablet. And very recently, Milagrow launched India’s thinnest tablet TabTop 7.4 which is just 6.5 mm thin.

Just last week, Milagrow became the first Indian brand to introduce tablets running on Microsoft Windows platform. Other crucial differentiators will be quality and customer service – both fields where Milagrow has already made a name for it’s self.

“Today, tablets are being extensively demanded by all groups of consumers and in every sector whether its education retail, enterprise, hospitality, aviation etc. Such a huge demand in the market in India. ” Rajesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Micromax Informatics

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Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India With immense competition among the tablet players, companies are looking for ways to push their products ahead of their competitors. At Research In Motion, we have consistently focused on providing the best in technology coupled with simplified user experience which is also a differentiator for our tablet offering. With the inherent security functionality that wipes one’s professional information from the device when disconnected from the Bridge, makes BlackBerry PlayBook a must-have for enterprise users. At the same time the user interface, smooth functioning on wi-fi, availability of application and the android player are features that excites consumers choose the BlackBerry PlayBook over the rest.

“We have a huge retail presence across the country and the HCL tablets have been accepted well across all regions. HCL Infosystems has a widespread reach in currenty more than 4000+ cities in India” Gautam Advani, EVP & Hed, Mobility, HCL Infosystems Ltd

Key differentiators of the BlackBerry Playbook - Offering premium and relevant content/apps for different include: segments of users at minimal or no cost.

1) The ability to pair any Bluetooth enabled smartphone with the BlackBerry Playbook allows the user to save on monthly recurring data services cost and eliminates the Moving forward, what kinds of trends are likely to shape the tablet market forces? need of a dedicated sim card for the Playbook.

2) The ability to virtually partition and manage Corporate Gautam Advani, EVP & Head, Mobility, HCL Infosystems Data on the BlackBerry Playbook gives CIO’s peace of Ltd. • In the near future, utility value, inbuilt handy apps, onmind to control and manage Corporate data even on the-go seamless connectivity will be some the key trends personal owned Playbooks. This ensures that Corporate that will drive the Tablet space. data is not compromised even if the Playbook is stolen or lost.

3) The ability to create and manage a separate “Karbonn Mobiles Enterprise Catalogue section on the has at the present BlackBerry Playbook, allows IT administrators and users to seamlessly manage and update moment more than applications that are critical from a work 1000 distributorships perspective and mandated as per the organization policy guidelines. These are key and 50,000 dealers differentiators that make the BB Playbook which covering 90% the preferred choice of Enterprise customers today. of the country. These Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind Ans: The primary differentiators are the following: - Offering the best in class features and hardware specs at a very low price point.

- Anytime, anywhere internet connectivity over India’s GPRS networks to ensure maximum reach to the majority of India which does not have broadband connectivity.

- Ensuring a great internet browsing experience over GPRS connections (Datawind has 18 international patents on data compression that allows us to offer this) - Offering local language/script support to ensure that knowledge of English is not a hurdle for end users.

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consumers efficiently serviced by a dedicated sales team, also employs an advanced sales tracking mechanism to pursue sales which forms an integral part of the sales & marketing strategy of the brand” Pradeep Jain, Managing Director, Karbonn Mobiles

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• On the enterprise front, sectors such as BFSI, education, insurance, healthcare and entertainment will also play major role in driving the category.

• With the increase in number of other players the competition in the Tablet space has been on the rise, resulting in innovative products.

• Factors such as BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), upgraded multimedia features will further increase the acceptance of Tablet in the corporate sector.

Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India.

Industry has witnessed tablets unveiling by various existing and well established brands as well as by lower tier vendors at entry level. As varied are the offerings by different vendors, the segment that they are targeting are equally divergent. Moving forward, we expect to see android tablets and low cost tablets entering the market and shaping up the market forces.

Nafis Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Limited Tablets in either segments are becoming more and more apps focused with almost all major players launching media consumption or education specific apps catering to high income groups or students respectively. Primary TG for premium brands primary include youth 25-35 years, disposable incomes, status conscious, usually Double Income. For mass brands the Primary TG is turning out to be 13-25 student community with less disposable incomes, dependent on parents for their pocket monies.

Tablets in premium segments are seen more as a wholesome device for office & entertainment. In mass segments it is either more perceived as education, gaming limited entertainment.

Rajesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Micromax Informatics Recently, there has been high adoption of tablets in the Indian market in enterprise, education, retail sector. Going forward, the trends will be in terms of the content that is provided by the product. It would be more focused on the software rather than the hardware. It will be all about VAS applications and the ability of the device to fulfil the need gap of people. Today’s young generation consists of restless heads who demands for technology at the tip of their fingers. They

need to be technologically equipped and demand to possess the latest innovations. With growing competition it is observed that no consumer is a brand loyalist. Their ultimate goal is to possess an innovation. They may tend to switch onto other brand if they come across a relevant invention. So the prime focus for bringing in devices is to provide the consumers with a product they will aspire to buy rather than just concentrating on the pricing strategy. The success in adoption of tablets will largely depend on product performance and availability of relevant content.

Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind We believe that in the next 24 months the tablet market would exceed the size of the computer market in India – i.e. 10 million units /year. The space is enormous. Due to huge income disparities, there is space for different players offering products at varied prices to participate. Major players who may not have entered the market as yet will also enter this market. We are proud of the fact that we have created a product category, which was missing. The needs of a segment of the population were being ignored which would be taken care of by this category of tablets.

Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India The tablet PC is a unique category that beautifully amalgamates the functions of a laptop and smartphone on an entirely new device, best known as the third screen.

Tablet PCs give a good experience to users in terms of both work and leisure. One can download personal information while at the same time, get equal output from the device for workrelated functions. A lot of preference for the device is also driven as a result of this capability that comes with tablet PCs. In a country such as India, the uptake is also widely driven by various factors namely, price, tariffs and availability of relevant apps. While there are consumers who will go for competitive pricing and average technology, there will continue to be a great demand for tablets of global standards with cutting edge technology for the technology savvy category of users. From an Enterprise perspective the security and manageability features of the Tablet are key driving factors given that secure Corporate data cannot be compromised even on employee owned tablets.

“This new concept in the consumer electronics field and considering the number of young tech-savvy population in India, tablet market is bound to grow many folds in the coming years.”

Kapil Wdhwa, Managing Director, Champion Computers

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Kapil Wadhwa, MD, Champion Computers Ans. The tablet as a device scores over others because of its compact size, larger screen than smart phones and reasonably good processing power. We foresee that the education and entertainment content would play a driving force in the adoption of tablets.

With the increase in e-books both educational books and fiction/non-fiction and entertainment ( movies, music and games ) being consumed on demand and on the go, the tablet provides the right user experience .

Most of the tablets are from China and are more or less of the same quality so the onus of differentiation comes down to either pricing or the final product itself coupled with strong after MOBILITY

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sales service. We have already integrated our tablets with some unique apps and the tablets are aggressively priced with no compromise on quality.

We are adopting a "market penetration' strategy rather than a 'market skimming ' strategy.

Apps are the catalysts in this segment for now, but as our consumer gets accustomed to tabs and there is development in the android segment we see many possibilities like customized ROM's, rooted Tabs, induction of 4G etc.

Please share some of your tablet product models that you are planning to launch in the Indian market?

Alex Huang, Managing Director, System Business Group, Asus India.

In India, it's both value and price that work for the customer at large. Our prime strategy remains in offering product line considering all the aspects including Value, volume, and other exciting features, in order to offer the most complete and satisfying computing experience. We intend to roll out products for the mid level segment as well.

“This new concept in the consumer electronics field and considering the number of young techsavvy population in India, tablet market is bound to grow many folds in the coming years.”

Suneet Singh Tuli CEO, Datawind

Sunil Lalvani, Director, Enterprise Sales, Research In Motion, India The Indian market is yet at a nascent stage of tablet consumption; hence currently we don’t have plans of releasing a new tablet in India. However keeping pace with the steadily growing global infrastructure and technology capabilities, we have recently launched the new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with built-in support for cellular networks. The new 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook maintains a sleek and ultra-portable form while delivering overall faster performance over the original BlackBerry PlayBook, as well as support for blazing fast 4G LTE networks. The 4G LTE BlackBerry PlayBook allows customers to work more productively and connect to the Internet, as well as access their email, on-line apps, media and content, from more places than ever.

Rajeev Karwal, Founder & CEO Milagrow Business & Knowledge Solutions Tablets which can give a user the ability to not only consume but also create information, will find their place in the list of necessity items and not just as luxury gadgets.

We are launching two Android TabTops in Chennai - a sub`10,000 product and a very impressive 10-inch product priced above Rs. 20,000. Just last week we launched 2 powerful 10inchWindows tablets running Intel Cedar Trail N2600 1.6 GHz duo core processors with internal memory options of 64GB and 128GB. Suneet Singh Tuli, CEO, Datawind Ans. We have a number of new products in the pipeline, and expect at least 3 new product introductions before end of this year. Our focus is to vary the form factor beyond just 7”.

Further details will follow.

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Nafis Kazim, Chief Operating Officer, Shyam Networks Limited Winknet is looking at launching two tablets in the initial phase. Those are Wonder (7 inch) & Ultimate (9.7 inch).

1. Wonder: The target group of Wonder are primarily students, young professional, techno geeks with limited spending power within an age group of 16 – 24. The tablets would promise of giving enriched broadband experience and is prices at Rs. 8995. This is complete value for monery with best in class H/W, features and apps.

2. Ultimate: Ultimate is targeted at the age of 25-24 mid level professional with highe level of awareness and techno friendly attitude. Priced at MRP:14995/-, this product would have lots of office suite apps relevant for the professionals Both tablets are high on gaming, Bollywood & thousands of downloadable apps.

Kapil Wadhwa, MD, Champion Computers Ans. We are planning to launch 2 new models in the next one quarter. The first is an ICS 4.0 based tablet with calling features called the Wtab 7.3. The second one would be 2G Tablet with Calling , followed by 3G Tablet with Netsurfing feature Sandeep Popli, Country Manager, Go Tech Digital Pvt We will have 4 models by October 2012 and plan to have 5 models by end of this year. We would continue to work with 5 models thereafter and keep changing the models as per the trend. However we will always be there with an entry product.

Stay tuned for a new product announcement in next one week.

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