Samsung eyes 60 pct of India smartphone sales
Kolkata, Feb 14 (Calcutta Tube / IBNS): Samsung Electronics, the world’s No. 2 handset maker, aims to take in 60 percent of the booming Indian smartphone market by the end of the year, consolidating its lead in the segment and possibly overtaking rival Nokia in total cellphone sales.
“We currently have a market share of 41 percent in the smartphone segment that has witnessed a growth of 220 percent last year. This year, we want to take it forward to at least 60 percent,” Ranjit Yadav, head of Samsung’s mobile and IT operations in India said in Kolkata on Tuesday.
He said that India’s smartphone market, that stood at 2.5 million annual units at the end of 2010, had expanded to over 8 million units by last year and in 2012 the company expected it to swell to between 20 to 25 million units.
Yadav was in Kolkata on Thursday to launch three smartphones that support two SIM cards each, to cash in on an increasing demand in the market for dual-SIM devices that saw the category grow by more than 66 percent to sell 45 million units in the last quarter of 2011, according to Samsung.
“We are coming up with an arsenal of choices for consumers,” he said, brandishing the Galaxy Ace Duos launched of the company on Tuesday, making it the first major player to come uo with dual-SIM smartphones.
The three phones, Galaxy Ace Duos, Galaxy Y Pro Duos and Galaxy Duos, priced between Rs 10,490 and Rs 16,900, are targeted at young individuals in need of a device to efficiently juggle their personal and professional lives, Samsung said.
Seoul, South Korea-based Samsung, that became the world’s No 1 smartphone maker in the third quarter of 2011, has already said it is confident of becoming the world’s largest seller of cellphones in 2012, ending Nokia’s 14-year reign.
However, the company’s Indian officials avoided making predictions for the Indian market but said that Samsung would only augment its lead in smartphones, the fastest growing category, that currently accounts for about 6 percent of all cellphone sales in India.
Yadav said that Samsung’s mobile business, driven by sleek designs, rich yet affordable product line-ups and aggressive marketing, now contributed more than half of the country’s annual Rs 20,000 (over $4 billion) revenue in India.
According to Arshad Warsi, Director at Samsung India Mobile, the company has nearly 32 percent share of India’s $8 billion handset market in terms of value, and expects to grow by 50 percent by the end of the year.
“With 800 million cellphone subscribers in the country already we foresee a time soon when the demand for phones at the bottom of the pyramid will start to wane. The next wave of demand will come from people who want to upgrade their devices,” he said.
(Reporting by Divyanshu Dutta Roy)
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