Telecom Lead Asia: Market share of Nokia in India’s smartphone space has plummeted to 13.3 percent in 2012 from 38.4 percent in 2011.
Nokia’s smartphone share has dipped significantly as most of cost effective Nokia Lumia smartphones — on Microsoft Windows 8 platform — reached India in the second half of 2012. India is the number one telecom market for Nokia. Last week, D Shivakumar, head of operations at emerging markets, Nokia, has resigned.
During the calendar year of 2012, Samsung, which has become the #1 smartphone player in India overtaking Nokia, has increased its share in the smartphone business to 43.1 percent from 27.8 percent in 2011. Galaxy phones assisted Samsung to improve market share.
To become the #3 player in smartphone market displacing BlackBerry, Sony Mobile increased it share to 8.2 percent in 2012 from 4.8 percent in 2011, according to CMR India Mobile Handsets Market Review CY 2012.
Market share of BlackBerry, which did not have new smartphones in most part of 2012, dipped almost 100 percent to 7.5 percent in 2012 from 14.6 percent in 2011. In this major market, BlackBerry became the #5 smartphone player last year. Last month, BlackBerry’s India CEO Sunil Dutt resigned.
Interestingly, Apple is not finding any place in top 3 smartphone vendor list in India. This is despite its huge investment in marketing iPhones in the country.
Smartphone vendors shipped 15.2 million smartphones, registering a growth of 35.7 percent, in the country in 2012.
Total number of mobile handset shipped last year was 221.6 million, up 20.8 percent. In the mobile phone category (feature phones and smartphones), Nokia is still the market leader with 21.8 percent share. Samsung has only 13.7 percent share in this category. Samsung is trying to improve the market share through REX launch. The #3 player in overall phone category is Micromax with 6.6 percent share.
Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice, said: “Though we see a huge market ‘hype’ around smartphones, the fact remains that the India Mobile Handsets market is still dominated by shipments of feature phones. On the other hand smartphone shipments are growing fast. This indicates India is still a new phone market, where feature phones contribute to the bulk of shipments compared to replacements or upgrades.”
The year 2013 will be significant for all smartphone and feature phone vendors in India since the uptake of both 3G and 4G will increase thanks to roll out by companies such as Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and Reliance Jio Infocomm, etc.
Players such as Samsung, HTC and Sony Mobiles will increasingly try to establish leadership through differentiated offerings and by promising a ‘seamless’ experience across the four consumer screens – smartphone, tablet, PC and TV.
At the same time, home grown vendors such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava will try to make a mark against their global competitors, by bringing to market powerful, yet attractively priced smartphones in an attempt to widen their appeal and grow the overall smartphone user base.
Baburajan K
