More Indians preferred tablets for their computing needs in 2011-12 than netbooks, a smaller form of a laptop.
According to the annual PC sales data by the hardware industry body, Manufa-cturers' Association for Information Technology, only 280,000 units of netbooks were sold in 2011-12.
However, industry estimates, about 350,000 tablets were sold in India during the period.
"It's too early to predict trends, but in 2011-12, sales of tablet PCs had started cannibalising the netbook sales.
Consumers preferred alternative devices over netbooks and this was reflected in the 11 per cent drop from the previous year in the number of netbooks sold," said MAIT president A Bhardwaj.
While tablet is emerging as a household product, laptops are still considered as business-oriented devices.
The laptop or notebook category is growing at 26 per cent year-on-year, he added.
"The sales of tablets were primarily driven by the availability of low-cost devices at the sub-Rs 10,000 mark.
"People are mostly using it as a web browsing device," Jayanth Kolla, co-founder
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