Indian tablet market had stabilised and was growing again, says research firm IDC as a part of its Q2 2015 report announced on Wednesday.

The tablet market grew by 23 per cent. Overall, there were 1.04 million unit shipments representing a growth of 22 per cent for the same period in 2014 and a year over year growth of 15 per cent. Q2 2015 saw a growth of 12.4 per cent from Q1 of the year in terms of shipments. Even the volumes doubled from the same period last year, said the IDC report.

Surprisingly, the growth of the tablet market was being fuelled by devices based on Microsoft's Windows operating system, which typically is known to dominate the PC and notebook space. Shipments of Windows based tablets doubled over the previous quarter claimed the report and the OS has a share of 5 per cent of the market for the device category. Largely affordable tablets running Windows made by vendors like Micromax, iBall and Lenovo were popular.

Almost three fourth of tablets sold in India are connected tablets (2G/ 3G/ 4G-enabled) and 54 percent are 3G-enabled owing to limited Wi-Fi hotspots in the country.

Another surprising development was that iBall, which is a rather unknown brand lead in terms of tablet shipments. It captured 14.9 per cent of the shipments, followed by Samsung at 13.8 per cent and Datawind at 13.5 per cent. Micromax was left behind at 12 per cent, followed by Xiaomi at 9.5 per cent and other brands.

Xiaomi also seems to have done pretty well considering it has only one product in the segment called the Mi Pad, which was also launched only in March. iBall raced to pole position largely thanks to sub $100 solutions.

iBall bounces back
iBall had lost its position to Korean electronics company Samsung in the first quarter due to relatively lower shipments. The Indian player took back the lead position riding on its entry level tablets, new products and expansion in terms of retail and geographical reach.

Samsung slipped to second spot owing to inventory issues in some of their top selling models which restricted the overall performance.

"However, new products launched in seven inches and eight inches segment gained good traction and is expected to contribute to Samsung's growth moving forward," IDC said in a release.

Not so smart growth in China
Meanwhile, the once-hot smartphone market in China is expected to cool this year, growing a meager 1.2 percent.

The China smartphone market grew 19.7 percent last year and accounted for nearly a third of all new handsets shipped, according to the IDC.

The forecast came a day after Apple chief executive Tim Cook said that the California-based company is still seeing "strong growth" in China despite a recent global stock market downturn.

IDC trimmed its forecast slightly for the total number of smartphones it expects to be shipped worldwide this year, placing that growth at 10.4 percent, or 1.44 billion units.

Regions with the largest potential for growth in smartphone sales are price sensitive, meaning iPhones are not likely to wrest market share from lower-cost handsets powered by Google-backed Android software, according to IDC.

IDC forecast that shipments of Android smartphones would grow from 1.16 billion this year to 1.54 billion in 2019, while iPhone shipments were expected to grow from 223.7 million to 269.6 million during that same time period.

It also predicted that Android would hold on to its 81 percent share of the smartphone market.