The quarterly results are in and Samsung has increased its lead by 5% compared to the same performance last year. So what exactly is happening in India?
Samsung is best known for its phones such as the galaxy s6 and the note 5 but the real cash cow for the Korean tech company is the mid-range and low end smartphone market. Samsung sells millions of phone in these segment worldwide.
On the Indian front, the market share for the past quarter has inflated to 26.8%(which was 22% last year) while its closest rival, micromax has lost heavily. Samsung has global presence and huge amount of resources which are not available for the local as well as the Chinese players. Most of them depend on the online sales as well as flash sales for selling their smartphone but not many have the offline presence in the Indian market.
Samsung has mainly benefited from its offline presence in India. It has actually flooded India with 30% less phone models compared to last year and pumped huge amount of money into the ad campaigns and making the phones more affordable all the while increasing the features as well as built quality.
Samsung is not slowing down anytime soon. India is one of the rare market for Samsung where it is seeing a profit growth amidst it global division that has the profits freefalling. Even apple is eyeing the Indian sub-continent and is designing a special iPhone for the exact purpose named as iPhone 5se. but still the Chinese smartphones are infiltrating Samsung share of users.
Samsung on its part is betting big on the 4G mobiles in India. 4G networks are slowly rising in the country and the galaxy smartphone maker wants to be ready for this 4G revolution.
“With data speed, evolution of network happening, the adoption of smartphones will accelerate and 4G will be one of the key factors,” Samsung India General Manager (Mobile Business) Vishal Kaul said here today.
“Last year 60 per cent of shipments in the industry were 4G devices and Samsung garnered 60 per cent share of that. Increasingly, people are adopting 4G, probably they are leapfrogging and many people will skip 3G. They will go from 2G to 4G straight. Prices of 4G devices are also dropping and I see 4G being the dominant technology used in smartphones,” he noted.
“There will be more launches of 4G phones,” he said, adding that their 4G phones range from Rs 8,000 to Rs 55,000.”
