BANGALORE, INDIA: The year 2009 was not good for India’s mobile handset market. Mainly affected by lower sales in the first six months (January—June), the market remained flat in calendar year 2009 to register sales of 01.54 million units, said research firm IDC.

According to a PTI report, the number one player Nokia remained on the top with a market share of 54.1 per cent in terms of units sold during the last year which ended December 31, 2009, followed by Samsung with a 9.7 per cent share and LG with a 6.4 per cent share in number two and number three spots, respectively.

The market showed signs of revival in the fourth quarter (October—December) of 2009 to record a year—on—year growth of 2.3 per cent to touch 28.36 million units, PTI quoted IDC India as saying.

The year saw new vendors registering a combined market share of 12.3 per cent in terms of total India mobile handset sales. The number of such new vendors in the India mobile handsets market grew to 28 and they together garnered 17.5 per cent of the total sales for the first time during the October—December 2009 quarter.

Naveen Mishra, Lead Analyst, Mobile Handsets Research, IDC India,  mentioned about the rise of ‘copycat’ models of handsets that have looks and aesthetics resembling those of high-end smartphones. He said this trend was expected to continue and the market would witness launch of more look-alikes following the launch of aspirational value smartphone models by major vendors.