The worldwide tablet market might be growing but it is not the same in India. According to the data released by research firm IDC, Indian tablet market dropped 32.8 percent year-on-year in Q1, 2014 and there were just 780,000 tablet shipments in the last quarter.

IDC blames the lack of new buyers and the necessity of Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) compliance for this drop but we believe that it is the lack of decent budget Android tablets in the country, which is the reason for fewer tablet unit shipments.

“Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) compliance is certainly hurting the white-box market. International device vendors like Apple and Samsung grew in comparison against Q4 2013, posting significant double-digit growth rates in Q1. However at an overall level, the branded vendors were unable to capitalize 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 at IDC India.

Coming to the vendor specific shipments, Samsung continues to be the top tablet vendor in the country, followed by Apple and Micromax. IDC has surprisingly also included Datawind in the top-four tablet vendors but in the absence of actual sales numbers, any company can hoard tablets in its warehouses and be among the top vendors in terms of the shipments.

IDC predicts that Indian tablet market will continue to hover around the same shipment numbers in the coming quarters and there is little hope for change.