ND COMMERCE Brand eChannels Specialist http://ndcommerce.in SmartPhones in the Indian Market It isn’t a hidden truth anymore that the smartphone market provides to be one of the most substantial businesses at the moment. The competition is fierce among the big game players to increase its customer base as well as have a strong hold within the market. India is a major market for smartphones. India has inched past the US to become the second largest smartphone market in terms of active unique smartphone user base in the world with the base crossing 220 million users. This speaks volume for the scale India market provides for any player in the mobile connected ecosystem. It is estimated that the value of smartphones sold last year was anywhere between Rs. 75,000 crores to Rs. 80,000 crores. The growth in the smartphone market was helped by vendors using online retail or "eTail" to penetrate the market. Listed below are some of the few major companies who have been dominating the Indian market for some time now. Samsung Samsung wasn’t as popular as now. The South Korean based company struggled to keep up with the smartphone market, but now they have progressed so much that they are the main competitor of Apple Inc. Samsung's market share in the smartphone’s segment in India went up from 35.1 percent to 45.9 percent during 2015. It has an overall market share of 44 percent across all segments. Samsung with 18 4G devices account for 62 percent market share. The company was focusing on 4G, which was growing rapidly and consumers were migrating from 2G and 3G. The R&D team is based in Chennai, Bengaluru and Noida. Samsung is manufacturing all mobile phones across all segments, except Gear S2 and Gear VR, in India. "We strengthened our device portfolio across price categories, which has resulted in a strong market share," said Asim Warsi, vice president of marketing for IT and mobiles at Samsung India. Samsung caters to its demographic. They offer better features for a lesser price and this is exactly what goes with the Indian market. HTC HTC compared to Micromax, Lava and Samsung are on the lower end of the spectrum. But that doesn’t mean they are giving up on the competition in the Indian market. According to market research firm GfK, HTC currently has less than 5% market share in the mid- range smartphone segment, and almost 4% in the overall smartphones category in India. HTC is ramping up its presence in the affordable category (Rs 8,000-15,000) in the country with the introduction of new devices, including 4G-enabled, to gain share in the heavily contested smartphone market in India. By doing that HTC are targeting a minimum of 8% gain in the 1 / 3 ND COMMERCE Brand eChannels Specialist http://ndcommerce.in above category within the next 6 months. “We will broaden our price play horizons at both ends. India is an important market for us. If HTC has to do good globally, India numbers have to be positive,” HTC President (Global Sales) Chia-Lin Chang said. Micromax Micromax is an Indian consumer electronics company headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana. The company was established as an IT software company operating in the embedded devices domain; it later entered the mobile handset business. Micromax's claim to fame was its Canvas series, which offered an affordable alternative to the likes of the high-end phones in the market. It has heavily invested in local manufacturing, producing up to 2 million units a month in the country. Budget smartphone maker Micromax had leapfrogged South Korea's Samsung Electronics to become the leading supplier in India's booming smartphone market for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2014. Micromax is also the parent company of Yu Televentures, which has inked an exclusive partnership with Cyanogen Inc. to deliver Cyanogen OS pre-installed on its devices. Lenovo At the end of the final quarter last year the Lenovo group, comprising Lenovo and Motorola brands, has overtaken Lava to climb to the fourth spot in the extremely competitive smartphone market in India. While Samsung is the industry leader in volume terms, Micromax is second and Intex third. The Lenovo-Moto combine has overtaken Lava to grab the fourth position. In value terms, Lenovo is number three, ahead of Intex. Samsung and Micromax again occupy the top-two spot. From value point of view, the Lenovo group have 11% market share. One of the reasons why they have grown so significantly is because of their dual brand strategy. Both cater to different kinds of customers and in different platforms. While Lenovo sells offline and online, Moto is exclusively online. In the online space, we are the number one company To meet their rapidly growing service requirements, the company has begun opening Lenovo- Motorola exclusive service centres. Till date, the company has opened 52 centres across 42 cities and has targeted 100 by March 2016 across 75 cities that will cover 75% of the smartphone market. Lava Lava International was established in the year 2003 as Pacetel Communications. In 2009, the 2 / 3 ND COMMERCE Brand eChannels Specialist http://ndcommerce.in company was renamed Lava International. The company launched the world’s first Intel chip- based smartphone. Lava is the first India phone vendor to introduce its own user interface or skin —Hive— on the Android OS. No other domestic brand has invested on this front lately. The new software is said to be a strong product differentiator for Lava devices in India. Lava with a healthy 20 per cent year-on-year growth continued to manage its place in the top five in highly cluttered Indian smartphone market. Lava gained share in the online channel mainly through 4G based shipments from their Xolo series. Lava can be a serious contender in the Indian market over the years to come. They are steadily increasing their customer base and their smartphones are not failing them. Future Emerging as a big force in the global smartphones market during 2015, India saw about 75 million devices being shipped in the first three quarters of the year. The pace of the blistering growth was further strengthened by the online channel as many handset makers added e- commerce only devices. So it is safe to say that the future of the India smartphone market is going to be as fierce as it can get. International brands do realize how much business as well as revenue be generated if they ever decide to entice the market with their products. Only time will tell in the next coming years whether the competition is stable at the top or whether there will be a new entrant to challenge the current situation in the market. Author Rohit Shiva Linked In 3 / 3 Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).