MUMBAI: The Indian mobile handset market has witnessed drop of five per cent in its revenues to Rs 312.15 billion from Rs 330. 31 billion during FY 2011-12, according to an annual survey by CyberMedia group’s telecom journal Voice&Data.
The drop in revenues is attributed to feature phone sales decline and lower average selling values (ASVs). Six of the top 10 brands including Nokia, Micromax, Blackberry, Spice, LG and G’Five saw a negative growth in revenues. The entry level smartphones of companies like Samsung, HTC, Huawei and Karbonn witnessed a marginal rise in the revenue.
Voice&Data group editor Ibrahim Ahmad said, “Indian mobile phone brands that had hoped to make a mark by sourcing Chinese handsets and selling them only on the price plank were in for a big surprise. These players will have to quickly rethink their product, marketing and service strategy afresh to put their house in order.”
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Nokia positioned itself as the leader amongst players with revenue of Rs 119.25 bn, despite an eight per cent drop over Rs 129.29 bn revenues posted in FY 2010-11. The Finnish company lost market share in the smartphone and multi-media segment in comparison to Samsung, HTC and Apple due to its absence in the android market. However, it made headway in the dual-sim handset category and ended the year with a market share of 38.2 per cent.
Samsung attained the second position displaying a growth in revenues by 38 per cent to Rs 78.91 bn. The company posted a market share of 25.3 per cent owing its success to products based on windows, android and bada operating systems. The Samsung Galaxy Note sold around 40,000 units each month since its launch in 2011.
“As consumers look for applications beyond voice and SMS, the market will see a fight for high end feature phones and smartphones intensify further. Consumers can also look forward to steeper price drops and more features in the same price,” Ahmad added.
The 17th annual survey was based on around 30 multi-national and Indian mobile handset firms selling feature, multimedia, enterprise handsets and smartphones in the country.
Micromax witnessed a drop of 13 per cent posting revenue of Rs 19.78 bn and market share of 6.3 per cent ranking third on the list. Blackberry emerged fourth with a significant drop of 25 percent to post revenues of Rs 14.60 bn and market share of 4.7 per cent. Indian player Karbonn rounded off the top five displaying a growth of 32 per cent posting revenues of over Rs 10 bn and a market share of 4.3 per cent.
Taiwanese handset maker HTC saw the maximum growth of 105 per cent amongst all the brands surveyed. Its revenue more than doubled to Rs 9.23 bn from Rs 4.50 bn posting a market share of three per cent.
The other key players in the Top 10 list include spice Telecom (Rs 7.90 bn), LG (Rs 7.80 bn), Huawei (Rs 7.60 bn) and G’Five (Rs 6.70 bn).
