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Cover Story
India’s Smartphone Wars Whether it is local Indian brands such as Micromax or Karbonn or global majors such as Samsung, Blackberry or Apple’s iPhone, Smartphone are a hot segment today and all the brands are logged in a war to capture maximum market share
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Mobility June 2013
T
he smartphones sales in India grew over 100% (year-on-year) in 2012 to reach 20 to 22 million units. For the first time, monthly sales crossed 2 million units in Q4 and smartphones breached the USD 75 price in the same quarter. Currently in India, almost all the mobile devices available over USD 150 are smartphones. While both Nokia and Blackberry lost significant market share (faster than expected), Samsung continued its momentum from late 2011 into all of 2012 to 2013 and today it leads the market (both in terms of volume and value). Indian handset OEMs started showing early signs of replicating their feature phones success (between 2009-11) in the smartphone space beginning Q3 & Q4 2012. According to industry estimates, the share of Indian players grew from sub 2% in Jan to close to 30% by Dec, 2012 (in volume). And, these players duly supported by chipset (System-on-Chip, SoC) vendors and ODMs are driving down the smartphone prices in India. Among operating systems, Android dominated the Indian smartphone market in 2012, primarily led by Samsung and the growth of Indian players in the latter half of the year. While Symbian’s (S60) deceleration was relatively slow in the first two quarters, it lost www.mobilityindia.com
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