Indian mobile handset market sales up by 10 percent in 2011, Nokia remains the market leader

By Telecom Lead Team:
The overall India mobile handsets market sales increased by 10 percent on Y-o-Y
basis at 183 million units in 2011, according to CyberMedia Research.

In the overall India mobile handsets market, Nokia retained
its leadership with 31 percent share, followed by Samsung at No.2 with 15
percent and Micromax at No.3 with 5 percent, in terms of sales (unit shipments)
during CY 2011.

For the year 2011, 172.2 million featurephones were shipped
at 7 percent Y-o-Y growth, whilst 11.2 million smartphones were shipped,
against 6 million in 2011, up by 87 percent on Y-o-Y basis.

In 2011 the India smartphones market witnessed the launch of
150 models by over 30 vendors.

Nokia’s market share plunged to 38 percent, against 72
percent in 2011. However, Nokia is still leading the market with a 38 percent
share.

Samsung emerged as the biggest gainer with 28 percent share
in CY 2011, against 5 percent smartphone market share in 2011. RIM’s market
share recorded at 15 percent at third place.

The research report reveals that the share of Android OS in
the smartphones category saw an outstanding growth of over 600 percent in CY
2011 with 34 percent share, against 9 percent market share in 2010.

This growth was mainly on account of an increasing
number of handset vendors adopting Android as preferred OS for their
smartphones.

In 2012, the proportion of smartphones with extended
features like NFC and 3D gaming are likely to increase. For instance, the Nokia
Lumia 610 has been announced at the Mobile World Congress 2012 at Barcelona. It
is expected that this phone would be aggressively priced to compete with
smartphones from the Android and RIM stable,” said Naveen Mishra, lead telecoms
analyst at CyberMedia Research.

For the year 2011, multi-SIM handset shipments recorded at
57 percent of the total India mobile handsets market, which shows year-on-year
increase of 61 percent.

In 2011, Nokia was the market leader in the category with a
nearly 13 percent share, followed by Samsung and Micromax with 8 percent market
shares for both.

After a long wait, Nokia introduced its dual-SIM phone
portfolio to the India market in September 2010. The innovative products in the
Finnish vendor’s portfolio helped Nokia become the market leader in the
category,” said Tarun Pathak, analyst, telecoms practice, CyberMedia Research.

The study further reveals that close to 250 unique 3G
handset models were shipped from approximately 30 different vendors in 2011.

 The total shipments of 3G phones in the country
touched nearly 18 million units, a year-on-year growth of 153 percent. Nokia
again emerged as the leader in this category with 52 percent share followed by
Samsung with 27 percent share and RIM with 6 percent share.

Table 1. India Monthly Mobile Handset Shipments (millions of
units), CY 2011*

Table 2. India Mobile Handsets Market: Shares of Leading
Vendors in Smartphones*

Table 3. India Mobile Handsets Market: Shares of leading
Vendors in Multi-SIM Mobile Handsets*

Table 4. India Mobile Handsets Market: Shares of leading
Vendors in 3G Phones*

*Source: CyberMedia Research India Monthly Mobile
Handsets Market Review, CY 2011, December 2011 release

editor@telecomlead.com 

Please see the complete coverage of Mobile World Congress here