India Mobile Handset revenues drop to a 5 per cent to Rs 31,215 crore from Rs 33,031 crore a year back, according to Voice&Data, the telecom journal brought out by CyberMedia. The annual survey by Indian Telecom industry by CyberMedia group’s flagship journal for the telecom industry Voice&Data attributes this drop two de-growth in the feature phones sales as well as lower average selling values (ASVs).
According to the BL report, several handset makers “disappeared” and other than Karbonn and Lava, no player could face the intense competition.
“Indian mobile phone brands that had hoped to make a mark by sourcing Chinese handsets and selling them on the price plank were in for a big surprise. These players will have to quickly rethink their product, marketing and service strategy to put their house in order,” Mr Ibrahim Ahmad, Group Editor, Voice&Data, said in a statement from CyberMedia.
“Consumers can look forward to steeper price drops and more features in the same price,” he added.
According to Voice&Data, Nokia remained the No1 player in the handset business in 2011-12 with revenues of Rs 11,925 crore, despite an 8 per cent drop from the previous year. Nokia ended 2012 with a market share of 38.2 per cent.
Its absence in the Android ecosystem dented Nokia’s performance. While it made headway in the dual-sim phones category, it lost out in the smartphone market, the report said.
Korean giant Samsung saw a 38 per cent increase in revenues to Rs 7,891 crore in the No 2 spot with a market share of 25.3 per cent. Analysts attribute this to the company’s “rich product portfolio based on Windows, Android and Bada operating systems”. Samsung’s Galaxy Note, a hybrid between a smartphone and tablet, has been a trailblazer selling 40,000 units each month since launch in late 2011,” the statement said.
Homegrown handset company Micromax, with revenues of Rs 1,978 crore, ranked No 3, holding a market share of 6.3 per cent, followed by Karbonn with 4.3 per cent market share.
Among the international players, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion saw the steepest fall of 25 per cent in revenues and had a market share of 4.7 per cent. HTC had the maximum growth of 105 per cent in revenues and had a market share of 3 per cent.
The 17th annual study surveyed over 30 mobile handset firms — both multinational and Indian — selling feature phones, multimedia phones, enterprise phones and smartphones in India, the statement from CyberMedia said.
