Panasonic is set to trim its smartphone business in India. This is part of its overall strategies to get out of non-viable businesses.
Earlier, Google-owned Motorola reduced its Indian smartphone business.
India is the third largest smartphone market in the world. Canalys Analyst says smart phone shipments in India rose 129 percent to 9 million in the second quarter of 2013.
Panasonic is planning to reduce its India smartphone business at a time when Microsoft is set to buy Nokia which has a large phone business presence in the country.
Also, Indian home grown Micromax is trying to overtake smartphone market leader Samsung in the smartphone space. ( Samsung, Micromax, Karbonn, Sony, Nokia in top smartphone market share in Q2 )
ABI Research recently said India and Brazil will be in the top four countries for smartphone shipments by 2018. China will displace the US as the largest smartphone market in 2013. Russia will become the 11th largest smartphone market in 2013 and will climb to 7th in 2018.
The emerging BRIC nations are displacing established markets such as the US and Japan as market leaders in terms of smartphone shipments, said ABI Research. Top 5 countries in 2018 will account for 51 percent of smartphone shipments while the BRIC countries will account for 33 percent of smartphone shipments.
Panasonic president in an interview with Reuters said the company will pull out of the smartphone market in Japan and pare its smartphone operations to outsourced production in emerging markets like India.
You may read the full story here Panasonic Corp will pull out of the smartphone market
The Japanese electronics company, which has suffered $15 billion in losses over its latest two financial years, is staking its turnaround on a transformation from a consumer gadget maker to a supplier for other businesses.
The company’s mobile division was likely to lose more than the 1.1 billion yen ($11.02 million) targeted loss for the financial year ending next March. Panasonic’s mobile division posted an 8.1 billion yen loss last year.
While the company is stepping back from the consumer smartphone market, it has said it is developing smartphones for business use that would be similar to its popular Toughbook notebook PC series.
