New Delhi Sep 28 (IANS) The shipments of mobile handsets in India grew by 6.3 percent quarter on quarter to touch an all-time high of 38.63 million units in a single quarter, said a study released by advisory firm IDC’s India quarterly mobile handsets tracker ‘2Q 2010’.
According to the study, the dual and triple SIM card slot phones have grown to touch 38.5 percent of the total India mobile handset shipments, from less than one percent in the second quarter of 2009.
‘In the recent quarters, several new players successfully launched their own devices at significantly lower average selling value in the price sensitive India market,’ said Anirban Banerjee, associate vice president-research of IDC India.
‘Such handsets found ready acceptance amongst first-time buyers, especially from small towns and villages,’ he added.
The study revealed that entry of new brands led to a spurt in overall market and saw emerging vendors corner 33.2 percent of total India mobile handset shipments in the second quarter of 2010.
The Finnish handset maker Nokia retained its number one position with a market share of 36.3 percent in terms of units shipped. The Korean electronic giant Samsung retained its number two position while the Chinese brand G’Five emerged as the number three player.
According to Naveen Mishra, lead telecom analyst of IDC India: ‘The Indian 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,’ he added.
According to the study, the number of emerging vendors in the growing mobile handsets market in India grew to 35 in second quarter of 2010 and garnered 33.2 percent of total shipments for the first time during the April-June 2010 quarter.
This represented a manifold increase from five new vendors representing a 0.9 percent combined share of units shipped in the January-March 2008 quarter.
During the last six months, the top five mobile handset vendors in India were Nokia, Samsung, G’Five, Micromax and Spice, said the study.
