Cameraphone sales triple in a year

Nokia leads the market with 75% share.

Cameraphone sales has tripled in the first eleven months of the year, according to the latest survey by the market research firm ORG-Gfk.

Thanks largely to price-erosion of between 30 to 40 per cent since the beginning of the year, monthly sales of camera-enabled mobile phones has gone from around 66,000 in January to around 2 lakh in November, according to the study conducted in 35 towns in the country.

Cameraphones, which accounted for roughly 12 per cent of the total mobile market in January this year, have increased to 22 per cent in November. This is despite the increase in the size of the GSM-mobile market which grew from around 5.5 lakh handsets a month to 9.5 lakh in November.

"It is almost wholly a factor of affordability," said Anant Jain, Product Manager for mobilephone sector at ORG-Gfk which has been tracking the sector the last two years. "The model which was selling for Rs 16,500 during the beginning of the year is available for Rs 11,000 now," he pointed out.

Delhi, which leads the cities in the number of handsets bought, also leads in the camera-phone segment. In October this year, the capital accounted for around 23,750 units compared to around 22,225 for Mumbai.

Bangalore, a distant third, bought 15,400 handsets and was followed by Hyderabad and Kolkata. Bangalore, however, was ahead of Mumbai in the proportion of camera-phone sales to total sales.

Jamshedpur, with sales of 822 units for October, was at the bottom of the heap. Nokia continues to dominate the market with a share of around 75 per cent while new entrant LG has, according Jain, seen rapid increase in its share in the last four months.

Among the top 10 models for the Rs 5,000-plus category for October, all the top six slots were taken by Nokia models.

Nokia's 6600, introduced two years ago, still dominated with a share of around 12.3 per cent in all the towns. The only other models in the top 10 belonged to Samsung and Sony-Ericsson. Nokia also continued to have a strong presence in the market, with its leading model available at around 78 per cent of the 13,000 outlets surveyed.

As expected, older models accounted for a higher market-shares in smaller towns compared to the metros. Nokia's best-selling model, introduced in November 2003, accounted for between 35 to 45 per cent of the total units sold in Raipur, Jammu and Faridabad whereas it contributed only 15 to 17 per cent of the volumes in the top three cities.