Taiwanese smartphone company HTC is planning to nearly double its retail presence to 7,000 outlets and service infrastructure to 400 centers in India.
The expansion is aimed at assisting HTC to compete with foreign devices makers such as Nokia (Microsoft), Apple, Samsung and domestic phone makers like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn, etc. in the rapidly growing smartphone market in India.
According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung, Micromax and Apple are leading the Indian smartphone market in the first quarter of 2013.
“India is very key market for us where we are investing very heavily. Our point of presence had grown from 2,000 to 4,000 outlets and now we are targeting to get to 7,000 outlets in next 6 to 9 months. We now have three new distribution partners,” said HTC India’s Country Head Faisal Siddiqui.
HTC has quadrupled service infrastructure in the last 12 months, PTI reported.
“We are expanding our service infrastructure. Two years back we had 50 service centres, now we have 250. We are getting to around 400 level in 6 to 9 months as we expand our presence to over 150 cities in the country,” Siddiqui said.
Earlier, HTC said it would target to more than double its market share in India this year after recently launching its new HTC One flagship phone. But HTC One is yet to significant sales in the country. Samsung is the smartphone leader.
HTC India is aiming at a 15 percent market share in the domestic smartphone market by the end of this year. According to research firm GfK Group, HTC has 6 percent share of the Indian market.
The Taiwanese manufacturer recently added two national distributors and now has three across the country, covering over 100 dealers and 3,500 outlets. Its revenue in the first quarter was NT$42.8 billion, falling short of its projection of NT$50 billion to NT$60 billion.
On Tuesday, HTC said its CEO Peter Chou will not step down though the smartphone company is going through a tough phase.
