18th MAY 2015. Indian mobile-phone sales drop in 2015
According to the recent press release from CyberMedia Research consultancy, Indian mobile-phone sales have dropped for the first time in 20 years.
This raises the serious question: If a slowdown at hand for the world’s fastest-growing smartphone market? Mobile sales dropped to 53 million handsets in Q1 (January to March) 2015, compared to Q4 (October to December) 2014 from 62 million handsets.
Although India being considered price conscious market however the decline in smartphone sales from quarter-to-quarter was 7.14% while cheaper “feature” phones performed worse, with an 18.3% sales decline over the same period.
India became the fastest-growing market for smartphones in Asia-Pacific in 2014, and is supposed to overtake US as the second-largest smartphone market globally, with 204 million smartphone users by 2016, according to a study by eMarketer, a research firm.
To push local manufacturing, Indian government, in a budget announcement, increased the excise duty on mobile handsets to 12.5% from 6%, pushing the cost of handsets by around 4%.
The year 2014 saw the entry of many new players in the Indian mobile market, especially Chinese firms. With an 18.5% market share, Samsung continues to occupy the top spot, followed by India’s Micromax with 12.1% and Microsoft with 9.6%.
Within the smartphone segment, Samsung has an even bigger lead, a market share of 27.9%, followed by Micromax with 16.2% and Intex, an Indian brand, with 9.2%.
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