Dubai: A year can seem like eternity in the rarefied world of tablet computers. If DSF 2011 was the stage for it to become a trail-blazing consumer fad, 12 months down the line, local tech retailers — and shoppers — have come to accept the tablet as a commodity.
Not that you will find retailers complaining about the supposed scaling down in the status. "Year on year, 2011 saw the tablet volume growth at between 150 to 200 per cent compared to 2010," Nadeem Khanzadah, head of retail at Jumbo Electronics, said. "As for 2012, it will be double the numbers of last year. There's a huge growth yet to come."
Launch of iPad3
DSF 2012 run can surely be expected to absorb quite a significant portion of the latent demand for anything to do with tablets. And with speculation mounting that late February would see the global launch of the iPad 3, the ongoing DSF would also be an opportunity for local retailers to clear as much of their inventory of the earlier series as possible.
This would allow them to start with a clean slate — or should that be tablet — when official shipments of the iPad 3 reach the local market.
To stoke interest, Apple's retailers have also dropped the iPad prices by 5 per cent, while Samsung's local distributor, the Eros Group, confirmed it is watching this space quite closely.
"By the end of this week, we would take a call on the pricing gameplan for Samsung's Galaxy Tab during DSF," Niranjan Gidwani, deputy CEO at Eros, said. "Going by the early trends since the DSF opened, other product categories such as flat-panel TVs are generating sufficient volumes.
"Our sales of LED units were up 40 per cent compared with a year ago and more than compensated for the 25 to 30 per cent decline in prices over the last 12 months."
The trends so far suggest domestic shoppers are playing the dominant role at malls and shops, while the tourist traffic is only starting to make their presence felt. Gidwani, however, reckons visitors from the Subcontinent are already making their presence — and cash — felt.
"For LED TVs, there's still quite a significant difference in their local prices and what they retail for in India," he said. "Another factor that's helping sales here are the customs duty cuts India made more than a year ago on units up to 32 inches, but the impact of which is actually being felt now.
"We are seeing Indian tourists picking up flat-panels and taking them back as part of their baggage allowance. Until such time a steep price differential exists on the category between here and India, this will continue."
Demand for internet TVs
Electronics manufacturers and retailers are also looking to DSF 2012 to fin-ally get some traction going for internet TVs. Walk into electronics stores and the chances are that there would be a wide-ranging promotion going on for this format. "After sales of 3D TVs failed to live up to expectations, now is the chance to get something going with internet TVs," a retailer said.
Khanzadah conforms to this perspective. "There's a change of tack to internet TVs, certainly," he said. "Users have found the experience of using glasses to view 3D television uncomfortable, which is why the final frontier for this form would be when manufacturers are able to come out with glassless 3D viewing."
But there are a lot of other products and categories that shoppers can favour this DSF and the other promotions Dubai hosts annually. "Prices here may be aligned with other countries, but that's strictly on the hardware side," Khanzadah added. "But the value provided by bundled offers is something that no other market can provide. This is where DSF — and Dubai — scores."
Notebook demand
The tablet did a lot of things over and above what it was expected to do. But it has failed on one count — tablets have not managed to replace notebooks.
"At one time, it was thought the tablet would bring about the demise of notebooks," Nadeem Khanzadah of Jumbo Electronics said. "But going by what the market has been seeing on notebook demand, nothing of that sort has happened.
"The tablet is taking its place as the second or third computing format a consumer now needs. In that respect, this is exactly what has been happening in the United States."
