Advertisment

LG sees threat from Chinese vendors in CDMA space

author-image
CIOL Bureau
Updated On
New Update
Bhaskar Hazarika

NEW DELHI: Witnessing huge threat from Chinese handset manufacturers, LG Electronics Mobile division is strongly focusing on GSM mobile market in India.

The company which has potential business on the CDMA space in India now sees declining on the sales of the CDMA handsets.

Moon Bum Shin, president South West Asia, managing director LG India, said that the number of units shipped to India is declining due to the foray of many Chinese vendors in to the CDMA space. “We have been witnessing the entry of low end CDMA phones from Chinese vendors in the India market, which has led to shrinking numbers in the CDMA handset units,” Shin informed.

In 2006 LG sold nine million CDMA and 1.2 million GSM handsets in India. “This year the numbers could be less compared to 2006. It could be around 6 to 7 million CDMA handsets in 2007,” he said.

However, the company is strongly eyeing the GSM space and sees huge potential to boost its business in India. Currently the GSM and the CDMA statistics stand at 20 and 80 respectively. Shin said that the gap between the two segments is decreasing with the growth in the GSM space. The handset manufacture has set a target to sell 80 million handsets in 2007.

“We are targeting to sell more than 2 million GSM handsets in the India. GSM has huge potential and we see the growth curve rising,” he added.

“India is the second largest market for us in the mobile handset space after US. India constitutes 12 per cent of the global sales compared to US around 18 per cent,” Shin said.

Commenting on the Pune manufacturing facility, Shin said that they are currently manufacturing three entry-level handset models at the facility. He said that the company has outlined a target to manufacture 2 million handsets in India this year. The company has been exporting its handsets manufactured at the Pune facility to a couple of SAARC countries including Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The company on Thursday launched the LG shine slider (KE 970) and expects to sell 50,000 units in India by the year-end.

tech-news