The competition between Nokia and Samsung is increasing.
Both are finding new strategies to strengthen its foothold in Indian mobile
market.

Samsung has surpassed its rival Nokia to become the
leader in the Indian smart phone market. Samsung’s share — both in volume and
value terms has exceeded Nokia. Samsung’s volume market share in November stood
at nearly 38 percent, and value share at 35.2 percent, according to market
research firm, GfK.

In the month of October last year, Samsung’s share in
terms of value reached at 32.3 percent in the Indian smartphone market, while
Nokia led in terms of volume sales during that month. In the domestic market
smartphones contributed around 6 percent to overall mobile handsets during the
year.

“At Samsung, we believe in offering our consumers innovative
smart mobile devices across different operating systems and different price
points, and giving them more choice. This has helped Samsung emerge as the
preferred brand in the smartphone market in India,” said Ranjit Yadav, IT and
mobile country head, Samsung Mobile.

Samsung has a portfolio of 13 smartphones using multiple
platforms such as Windows, Android and Bada. The main reason behind the surge
in sales is the affordability and availability across operating platforms.

Globally, Samsung surged past Apple to become the world’s
largest seller of smartphones for the third quarter ended September 2011. Last
month, Samsung announced that its mobile handset sales exceeded 300 million
units in 2011.

Samsung had outperformed iPhone manufacturer Apple as the
world’s top smartphone vendor during the July-September period last year with
the help of strong sales of the Galaxy S smartphones running Google’s Android
platform. Samsung is hoping to sell 374 million handsets in 2012.

In Q3 2011, Samsung overtook Apple in smartphone sales,
according to analyst firm Juniper Research. 22 percent of 115 million
smartphones shipped in Q3 2011 were from the Korean giant, compared with
Apple’s 15 percent.

The main success for Samsung has come from its Android
based handsets, but the company is equally investing in other platforms under
its multi-platform strategy. Apart from its own Bada operating system, which
observed a good reception by the consumers, Samsung is focusing on its windows
phones.

The Indian market is dominated by Samsung, Nokia and RIM
and would get crowded with the entry of Chinese and other domestic companies
this year.

However, Nokia is radically changing its strategies to
boost its sales in India with the launch of Windows phones. But, the reception
so far is not very promising for the Finnish major. Nokia is trying to
strengthen market presence with its newly launched phones.

By Danish Khan
[email protected]