Record 38.6 mn mobile phones sold during Apr-June 2010

Mobile phone sales in the country has touched an all-time high at 38.63 million units in April-June 2010, growing 6.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter, according to advisory firm IDC.

As part of its Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker - 2Q 2010, IDC said shipments of mobile handsets in India touched an all-time high of 38.63 million units in a single quarter, driven primarily by low-cost handsets from the domestic brands.

"In the recent quarters, several new players successfully launched their own devices at significantly lower Average Selling Values (ASVs) in the price sensitive India market. Such handsets found ready acceptance among first time buyers, especially from small towns and villages," IDC India Associate Vice President-Research Anirban Banerjee said.

While Finnish handset maker Nokia retained its No 1 position, with a market share of 36.3 per cent in terms of units shipped, Korean electronic giant Samsung was on the No 2 slot with a 8.2 per cent share.  G'Five with 7.3 percent market share emerged as the No 3 player in the market, said the study.

Also, multi-SIM phones comprised as much as 38.5 per cent of the total shipments to India, as against less than one per cent in the same period last year.

The India mobile market saw a unique trend of multi-SIM phones capturing 38.5 per cent of the market. This could be attributed to several new service providers responding with highly competitive tariff plans to a price sensitive mobile telephony user market," IDC India Lead Telecoms Analyst Naveen Mishra said.

New brands have led the growth in the handset market, with the 'emerging vendors' garnering as much as 33.2 per cent of the total India mobile handset shipments in 2Q 2010, the study said.

This represents a manifold increase from five new vendors, representing 0.9 per cent combined share of units shipped in the January-March 2008 quarter, it added.