14 DAY TRIAL // Retail giants around the world seem to be very keen on adopting a certain trend – tablets. Amazon has a bunch out, Tesco released the Hudl device and another one will be coming next year, and Argos immediately followed suit, trying to take up a piece of the cake, too.
So it shouldn't come as a surprise that popular Indian retailer Flipkart is also gearing up to launch a line of tablets, under its own banner, reports BGR India. The slates will be unleashed into the wild under the DigiFlip brand name.
DigiFlip isn't unknown to customers used to shopping with the retailer. Flipkart has been marketing some accessories, in the form of earphones, portable speakers and laptop accessories, using the DigiFlip name.
With the new tablets, Flipkart will compete head-to-head to Arch enemy Amazon that is also currently selling tablets and eReaders into the country. Will the Kindle’s popularity manage to be subdued by a local brand? It might happen.
For the time being, there’s not much information we can give you related to specifications, but one aspect is known. According to the report, Flipkart has formed ties with MediaTek, so its tablets will most likely bundle the chip manufacturer’s architecture.
Flipkart will have to bring a decent set of specifications onboard, combined with a more than attractive price tag in order to be able to steal customers from the competition.
Furthermore, Flipkart can turn the tablet into a dedicated tool for accessing its own services, including the ebook-related ones, which might be an incentive good enough to convince customers to pick up one of these DigiFlip tablets.
Actually, that’s exactly the strategy Amazon is adopting, because what makes Kindles special is in fact the pre-bundled digital content.
The Indian tablet market continues to be a lofty place to do business, with 4.14 million devices shipping in the country last year, according to numbers coming from IDC.
According to the firm, Samsung, Micromax and Apple are the top three tablet vendors in the country. However, the rising popularity of the phablets should make tablet manufacturers think twice before rolling out new products, but it appears the fear hasn’t affected Flipkart.
Retailers will usually start setting up their in-house brands in order to maximize profit or to better focus on one category. For Flipkart, sales of electronics amount to 30% of its total $2.3 / €1.7 billion revenue, so pushing things along in this sector is an important part of the retailer’s strategy to improve business.