With 17 per cent market share in the Indian mobile market, Samsung Mobile plans to add another six to seven per cent market share this year. In an interview with Business Standard, Ranjit Yadav, Director, Mobile & IT, Samsung Electronics tells Chitra Unnithan about the company’s strategy to focus on innovation to achieve its target. Excerpts:

What are the marketing strategies planned to enhance the market value of the Samsung mobile phones?
Samsung plans to sustain the excitement in the marketplace through new product introductions across different mobile phone segments coupled with innovative advertising campaigns and consumer outreach programs. Samsung’s growth strategy continues to hinge on addressing consumer requirements with a robust and rich portfolio of devices that rank high on innovation, user experience and functionality. Teams at Samsung India Software Operations work on Android and Linux platforms, browsers and wireless communication protocols. Innovation is the centre piece of Samsung’s mobile strategy. A significant amount of work for the recently launched bada OS from Samsung has been developed in India. 

What are the key trends in terms of product design and features that consumers are looking for at present?
Consumers today relate to their mobiles as communication hubs — as personal gateways to communicate with friends, family and the world at large. Indian market is evolving and maturing and consumers are ready to experience the smartest of mobile devices. Samsung Mobile creates innovative mobile phones that address the needs of various consumer segments— bring imagination to life, inspire people to discover, communicate and share information in ways never before thought was possible. Samsung has enabled consumers to enjoy increasingly meaningful benefits from their mobile devices by delivering some of the biggest breakthroughs in mobile technology.Samsung recently announced the launch of Samsung Guru Power with a Long Battery Life of 2,000mAh providing a whopping 22 hours Talk Time and 2 months standby time, catering to its rural market. We made a big foray in smartphones with a compelling product set with its next generation Smartphones - Samsung Wave and Samsung Galaxy S and recently extended our portfolio with the launch of Galaxy 3 and Galaxy 5. 

What are the future technologies and innovations that Samsung Mobile is working on?
Samsung aims to bring the power of smartphones to the largest section of Indian consumers thereby pioneering the democratization of the Smartphone experience in India. By innovating and bringing its proprietary, ‘open’ mobile platform ‘bada’, Samsung is helping deliver a more intuitive, immersive and integrative experience for consumers. This means that users such as early adopters who prefer high end devices to users who prefer affordable mass market devices can be benefitted from the value that bada provides for a smartphone experience. Based on the feature set of WAVE and the overall value proposition it provides, Samsung expects a lot of feature based phone users including touch screen users to upgrade to smart phones. Samsung’s basic Vision is ‘Smart Phones for everyone’, thus launching smartphones across various price points, including more affordable price points.

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What are the new devices that you plan to add to your handset portfolio?
Samsung’s range of mobile devices is priced from Rs 1,600 – 40,000 and is committed to develop the brand to suit all price points and consumer needs. Currently, Samsung is offering Indian consumers a wide portfolio of around 17 handsets that are 3G enabled across price points between Rs 3900 and Rs 40,000. 3G handsets will be contributing around five per cent of the total handsets sold by Samsung and it aims to double the figure within a year. Given the fact that the rural penetration for mobiles is relatively low compared to the larger cities, with the rural teledensity being around 21 per cent, there is a big potential that can be tapped. Samsung currently holds a 17 per cent market share in the India mobile market and aims to add another six to seven per cent to its current market share by end of 2010. Samsung has in its portfolio entry level models, called the Guru Series that sell very well in these markets. Samsung leads the touchscreen category with over 30 per cent marketshare. Overall Samsung will launch 40-45 handsets this year, out of which 10 would be in the smartphone category. With Galaxy 3 and Galaxy 5, Samsung’s smartphone portfolio now boasts of four feature-rich models at a price range of Rs 10, 200 – Rs 31, 500.

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