Indian brands grab 14% share of mobile handset market

Homegrown handset makers like Spice, Micromax and Karbonn captured 14 per cent of the mobile phone market in India in FY 2009-10, thanks to the burgeoning growth in the cellular telephony, says a survey.

These manufacturers had just 3-4 per cent market share in the previous fiscal.

According to the Voice&Data100 Indian Telecom Survey, these Indian brands strengthened their presence in the domestic handset market in 2009-10, growing at the expense of multinationals like Nokia and Samsung.

While Micromax had a 4.1 per cent market share by revenue, Spice and Karbonn had a share of 3.9 per cent and 3 per cent in FY 2009-10, respectively.
    
Lava had a share of 1.1 per cent, Lemon 1 per cent and Max had a 0.9 per cent share, it added.
    
The Voice&Data100 annual survey on handsets is based on the revenue of telecom equipment suppliers, including GSM and CDMA handset vendors.
    
According to the study, even though Finnish company Nokia remained the market leader, its share came down to 52.2 per cent from 64 per cent last year.
   
Samsung's market share increased to 17.4 per cent this year from 10 per cent last year, while LG had a share of 5.9 per cent as against 4.5 per cent last year.
    
"Low prices for perceived high-end features. You get all-QWERTY Blackberry lookalikes complete with trackball, and even dual-SIM phones, for Rs 5,000," Voice&Data Chief Editor Prasanto K Roy said.
    
"We saw demand rising for dual-SIM phones last year, but the market leaders had few offerings there. And while Nokia has many low-cost models, they are relatively sparse on features," he added.
    
However, the low-cost handsets may fall short on applications, functionality, user interface and experience, and, often, quality of construction, solidity and robustness, he added.
    
The mobile handset market grew 4.2 per cent by revenue during FY 2009-10 compared to 7.9 per cent in 2008-09.
    
Around 108 million mobile phones were sold in the country during 2009-10, adding up to Rs 27,000 crore sales, up from Rs 25,910 crore the previous year.