Android tablets are now fundamentally more productive: Xiaomi’s Anuj Sharma

It took many years to get here, but India’s tablet market is finally witnessing a consistent, positive shipment trajectory. Numbers illustrate this. Research firm Canalys says India’s PC market, that comprises of desktops, notebooks and tablets, recorded an impressive 12% year-on-year growth, with 6.3 million shipments clocked. The reason for this growth, the finer print suggests, are tablets that recorded a 49% growth in shipments, totalling 1.9 million units.

HT had earlier reported CyberMedia Research (CMR)’s latest Tablet PC India Market Report Review for Q3 2024, which pegged this at an impressive 46% year on year growth. It isn’t just the availability of a broader, better choice of tablets in the market. As Anuj Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer at Xiaomi India explains, “the overall expectations from consumers in terms of tablets has changed. It is no longer just a large screen consumption device. It’s now a creativity device and it’s now a product productivity device.”

In the past few months, Xiaomi has strengthened its tablet portfolio. The Redmi Pad Pro and the Xiaomi Pad 7 that follows an impressive Xiaomi Pad 6, joined the line-up to tick off a number of items on a checklist—screen size options, price points and as Sharma calls them, “productivity attachments” such as the stylus and the keyboard cases do help with versatility of use.

The fact that the Xiaomi Pad 7 becomes the first truly affordable tablet with a nano-texture display (prices start around ₹31,999), is a stark contrast to the premium Apple charges for a similar display option on an iPad Pro. More than anything else, it allows Xiaomi to show what they’re capable of. In a conversation with HT, Anuj Sharma talks about a maturing tablet market in India, how buyers approach their purchase decision, the importance of a wide tablet portfolio without overlaps and the gaming project the tech company is working on. Edited excerpts.

How is India’s tablet adoption shaping up, and has it been a positive trajectory over the last year? What’s changed?

Anuj Sharma: Something has fundamentally changed in tablets, especially with Android tablets, and Xiaomi is one of the key players. If you remember perhaps 10 years ago, there used to be these Android tablets which I would probably say were large phone devices. They could do some aspects of it, but obviously, were limited in terms of usage. Now, overall expectations from consumers in terms of tablets has changed. It is no longer just a large screen consumption device. It’s now a creativity device and it’s now a product productivity device.

Obviously, the other aspect is it is still a larger device than your phone and probably sitting in perfectly, as per Steve Jobs’s vision, between the 14-inch screen laptops and your smartphone which is around 6.5-inches in screen size. Ten years ago, most of the tabs used to have seven to eight inch screens Now 10-inches or 11-inches has become the norm. The fact that our 11-inch tablets are doing really well goes to show that it’s sitting perfectly for users. Therefore, the best of both words in terms of mobility.

How do you expect that to unfold through 2025?

AS: Earlier tablets couldn’t do the productivity parts well, which now they can. As a result, the numbers speak for themselves. The IDC data last year showed a a massive growth year on year, around 46% up, especially as we got into the festive season. It went up significantly, more than seventy percent. The demand for a better tablet will continue, which basically means as long as we have the right products coming into the market, And I say that not just for Xiaomi, but for everyone else too. I don’t want to call them accessories because it’s a lot more than that—productivity attachments, if I could probably use that term, should see a a rise this year as well. But the overall quantum is much higher, so the percentage jumps may or may not be as high as what we saw over the last two years, but we should still see this segment continue to rise.

Does buyer feedback that you hear indicate evolved preferences, and does that have more to do with increased awareness about what tablets can and cannot do?

AS: The workflow aspect has become important. I imagine if you buy a phone, but you’re not able to use it for any work-related stuff, that’s something you will not accept. Likewise, when you’re buying a tablet, you want it to be able to do a bit more than just regular consumption. A phone is a great communication device, and for watching videos but if you’re watching a high-production series on Netflix or Amazon Prime, a phone isn’t really the best device. Secondly, you can’t really carry your laptop everywhere. A tablet helps here.

The second element is gaming is also kind of coming into play. Gaming on a tablet, I think, is a major cheat code. If you are playing a multiplayer game on a tablet, it gives you such a big jump in terms of a playing advantage. And of course, the productivity part of it. I think the biggest difference, that you don’t get with phones or laptops, is the pen. It becomes more than what a laptop could have ever done, than what a phone could have ever done. Tablets are opening up a lot of new avenues.

Has pricing, and by that I mean affordability, helped with this momentum?

AS: I don’t think that’s the case anymore. We are still in the early stages of the market, though we are seeing big numbers. It’s an exciting, new category that’s still not reached mass market. Having a better product probably is more important than having a cheaper product. If a consumer does get a better tablet at a few thousand rupees more, currently that market or that set of consumer is willing to make that choice.

Xiaomi has a broad tablet line-up. Is there a risk of confusion for the buyer, and does that have a bearing on launch plans for the rest of the year?

AS: Right now, we essentially have four tabs on sale, though a few more may still be around in the retail channels. We are also finding our feet, to be honest, trying to figure it out because back when we were launching the Xiaomi Pad 5 in April 2022, most feedback from the market was nobody buys tablets. We are also trying to figure out use cases, what consumers could like or not. The reason I’m saying that they’re not too price sensitive is because it’s showing us that the better the tablet, the more it sells for us.

We’ve got a portfolio now covering price points between ₹10,000 and ₹34,000. I think we can probably push it up a bit more, but we’ll have to wait and see. Right now, the initial response on the Xiaomi Pad 7 is fairly good, and more people are interested in the 12GB RAM variant, which is higher priced. That goes to show that buyers are looking at that aspect of it. Having enough options out there without too many overlaps, is going to be important.

A lot of the tablet experiences are being developed by tablet makers themselves. The workstation mode on Xiaomi tablets, being an example. Would you say Google is doing enough, to evolve Android for emerging tablet use cases?

AS: Google is doing the base work requirement, otherwise we would not be able to build on top of it. A case in point, they’ve got this DIP, or density independent pixel, programming which helps developers ready their apps for various resolutions and screen sizes. If I take the example of Instagram, the Instagram app on Android whether it is on a phone or a foldable phone or a tablet, is a better experience than what you see on iOS and the Apple iPad.

Google’s approach is continuing. It is a complex system for them, but they are doing a lot of work under the hood to basically have this entire responsive design going out for all the app makers. Now, as long as the apps are there and Google is enabling that from the Android ecosystem standpoint, it then comes down to brands like us. It’s all collaborative. If we try and make a tab like the Xiaomi Pad 7 with, Android 6 or Android 7, I don’t think any of what we see today would have been possible. Some apps have scaled up, some apps probably are not at the same level as what you’d expect, but I believe we’ll get there very soon.

There is talk about the WinPlay system that’s in development. What is the vision for that project, and how is that plugging into Xiaomi’s plans to build a gaming experience on Android tablets?

AS: It’s essentially a cool project, that has limited availability as a beta test. If successful, this could further transform our vision for tablets being the future of computing. From a left brain perspective, tablets are obviously more portable, will have better connectivity and let you do a lot more things in terms of from a pen to a keyboard From a right brain perspective, I think when you walk into a meeting with a tablet, you are infinitely cooler.

I’ve not been able to comprehend the fact that the current tablet hardware plays all those games. Just yesterday we were seeing some stats, and WinPlay on the tablet hardware is holding Grand Theft Auto 5 at around 45 frames per second. This is something which my gaming PC from a few years ago, could not do. The idea is a tab becomes your all-in-one large screen device. I don’t know how gaming on tablets is going to be in the future, but hopeful.