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Journalism of Courage
With a portfolio of low priced and feature-rich handsets,domestic companies like G’Five,Micromax and Spice have consolidated their position in the Indian mobile phone market with a collective market share of 33.2 per cent,according to research firm IDC.
This is against a combined share of 0.9 per cent from five new vendors in the January-March 2008 quarter,according to IDC India’s Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker 2Q 2010.
The total shipment of mobile handsets in India grew by 6.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter (2Q 2010 over 1Q 2010) to touch an all time high of 38.63 million units in a single quarter,it said.
Nokia,which continues to be the market leader,held about 36 per cent share in the Indian handset market for the quarter ended June 2010. The Finnish firm held 54.1 per cent of the total market in the calender year 2009.
“In the recent quarters,several new players successfully launched their own devices at significantly lower Average Selling Values (ASVs) in the price sensitive India market.
Such handsets found ready acceptance amongst first time buyers,especially from small towns and villages,” IDC India Associate Vice President-Research Anirban Banerjee said.
The handset market is mirroring the growth in monthly subscriber numbers in the country. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI),telecom operators added 17 million subscribers in July this year and have been adding similar numbers over the last several months.
IDC said there are now about 35 significant Indian handset vendors as opposed to just five in 2008.
During the last six months (January-June 2010) the top five mobile handset vendors in India were Nokia,Samsung,G¿Five,Micromax and Spice,it added.
Multi-SIM capability,which is a common feature offered by the Indian handset makers,constituted nearly 39 per cent of the sales in the June quarter,up significantly from just one per cent in the corresponding quarter the previous year.
“The India mobile market saw a unique trend of multi-SIM phones capturing 38.5 per cent of the market. This could be attributed to several new service providers responding with highly competitive tariff plans to a price sensitive mobile telephony user market,” IDC India Lead Telecoms Analyst Naveen Mishra said.
