NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indian mobile-handset brands strengthened their presence in the domestic handset market in 2009-10, adding up to 14 per cent market share by revenue, according to the V&D100 Indian Telecom Survey conducted by CyberMedia's telecom journal Voice&Data. This is up sharply from about 3-4 per cent total share by these brands in the previous year.

The Indian brands included Micromax (4.1 per cent handset market share by revenue), Spice (3.9 per cent), Karbonn (3 per cent), Lava (1.1 per cent), Lemon (1 per cent) and Max (0.9 per cent). Compared with last year, these Indian brands gained a cumulative 10 percentage points of market share in the very competitive Indian market, and Samsung gained 7 points, as Nokia lost 12 percentage points share.

The handsets in question are locally branded models sourced from manufacturers in China or Taiwan.

Why the big gain by these brands? “Low prices for perceived high-end features,” said Voice&Data chief editor Prasanto K Roy. “You get all-QWERTY Blackberry lookalikes complete with trackball, and even dual-SIM phones, for Rs. 5,000. We saw demand rising for dual-SIM phones last year, but the market leaders had few offerings there. And while Nokia has many low-cost models, they are relatively sparse on features.”

Yet the low-cost local brands don't beat the market-leaders in all areas, he added.

“Where they may fall short is in applications and functionality, user interface and experience, and, often, quality of construction, solidity and robustness,” Prasanto said. “But with the short life cycles of handsets today, many buyers are willing to experiment.”

Handset market grew 4.2 p.c

The mobile handset market grew 4.2 per cent by revenue during FY 2009-10 (compared with 7.9 per cent in 2008-09, and 11.9 per cent in 2007-08). The low revenue growth hides the large numbers sold, but reflects the fact that most sales are of low-priced handsets, and that the average sale price (ASP) has been dropping each year.

Around 108 million mobile phones were sold in the country during 2009-10, adding up to Rs. 27,000 crore in sales, up from Rs. 25,910 crore the previous year.

And growing even more than the handset numbers in 2009-10 was the number of mobile subscribers. The country added 192 million mobile subscribers in the fiscal. A large number of subscribers have more than one SIM card, and an increasing number are in fact using dual-SIM phones.

The Voice&Data100 annual survey on handset is based on the revenue of telecom equipment suppliers, including GSM and CDMA handset vendors.

Nokia loses market share

Handset major Nokia remained the market leader with 52 per cent share, despite a 15 per cent revenue dip to Rs. 14,100 crore (down from Rs. 16,567 crore in 2008-09). The Finnish giant's share was gobbled up by the Indian-brand handsets, and by Samsung. Nokia launched 22 devices during the year, selling them through over 200,000 retail outlets across the country (with 45 per cent in rural India), and supporting them with over 700 service centers across 400 towns and cities. But its services thrust diluted its focus on handsets.

Samsung remained the second largest handset vendor, with 17.4 per cent market share, followed by LG at 5.9 per cent. Sony Ericsson slipped badly last year, with very few options in the low- and mid-range handset segments.