Saturday, December 11, 2010

Indian mobile handset market

Nokia, Blackberry, Apple, Motorala, Philips, Panasonic, Sony Erricsson, Microsoft, Samsung, LG, HTC, Palm, Micromax, G'Five, Spice, Karbonn, iNQ, Zen, Lava, Lemon, Alcatel, Fly mobile, Olive.....If competition is not enough now there is Dell, Victor, AKAI, Sansui and Sharp mobile handsets are also entering the heavily congested Indian mobile handset market. And there is still more to come....Jaipan, Kokatta based Supertonics, Weston and Microtek are going to be next entrants. With each newbie company projecting a market share of 5% in the intial year itself and being in top 10 players in a few years and the biggies projecting higher market shares in the coming years, I wonder who is being realistic. How long will this mania last? Is this growth external or for the next 10/15 years? Finally, has the mobile handset degraded from a white goods consumer electronic product to an FMCG (Fast Mover Consumer Goods) product like shampoo/toothpaste?

What's surprising is that each newbie plans to enter the market with 10 handsets by the end of the year. All of them outsource all the manufacturing to China and have similar business models, similar features, similar distribution (here or there) and similar price ranges. I dont think any of these newbies have any real vision or to be in the handset market for the next 2 or 3 decades.

1 comment:

  1. This is as part of the technological and the entrepreneurial evolution. This is also like a lot of Chinese stuff being legalized!!!! This will take some time when the big fish eventually based on lots of factors eat up the smaller fish .... which you know for various reasons....

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