Indian brands muscle in on domestic smartphone market

10th July 2013
Indian brands muscle in on  domestic smartphone market

Gurgaon, July 10, 2013: Indians are buying smart phones at substantially faster pace than they are buying low end feature phones -- though in absolute numbers the latter still outsell the pricier variety 6:1. These are findings of CyberMedia Research in their India Monthly Mobile Handsets Market Review, for the period January to April 2013.

India registered 73.5 million mobile handset shipments for the period registering a growth of 11.1% year-on-year. During the same period, 9.4 million smartphones were shipped in the country, a growth of 167.3% on an annual basis.Samsung continues to be the market leader with Micromax and Karbonn at no. 2 and no.3 positions. This finding is similar to the IDC numbers were reported last week  However the CMR findings differ in one respect: They still find Nokia to be the biggest seller across the cellular space, with a  20.3% share to Samsung's 14.2% where IDC placed Samsung as no. 1.
Says Faisal Kawoosa,
Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice: “The featurephones market in India has matured, whereas the smartphones category is showing promising growth. This is attracting relatively new entrants such as Micromax and Karbonn to start offering smartphones, particularly for entry level users who would like to migrate to a more sophisticated mobile experience.”
Adds Tarun Pathak, Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice: “The India smartphones market saw the entry of two local vendors amongst the Top 3 positions for the first time, displacing Tier 1 international players. This shows that market dynamics have changed in the India smartphones segment. One of the key reasons for this is that a large number of featurephone users are migrating to entry-level smartphones. A significant proportion of these were already using the devices of local vendors and preferred to continue with a smartphone of the same brand. Thus, local vendors have been able to introduce their new smartphone offerings to this ‘captive’ customer base.”
“The trend of dominance of the India smartphones market by local vendors is likely to continue during the coming year. It is expected to sustain, till such time as one of the Tier I international players like Nokia, BlackBerry, HTC or Sony Mobiles launch a sustained marketing and promotion drive to regain share or introduce a new, potentially disruptive mobile device technology”, Tarun added.