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Sony, Motorola, LG, Acer join Apple, HTC to focus on top-end smartphones in Indi a Writankar Mukherjee & Gulveen

Aulakh, ET Bureau Jul 18, 2012, 02.48AM IST Tags: Smartphones| Samsung| Motorola| mobile phone companies| HTC| Google| Apple| android| Acer India KOLKATA/NEW DELHI: Once popular mobile phone brands Sony, Motorola and LG are jo ining the likes of HTC and Apple and focusing on the small but lucrative segment of high-value smartphones in the Indian market. The shift comes after multiple failed attempts to salvage market share in the fiercely-competitive feature phon e and entry-level smartphone segments. Ads by Google Mobile Phone CaseBranded Factory Seconds. Warranty Guaranteed. Competitive Price . Buy! greendust.com/GetShopping Buy Android Mobile PhonesBranded Phone, Low Price, Best Rate Safe Shopping, COD & Free Delivery www.brands4cheap.com These companies may have globally decided to move out of feature phones as early as last year, but were still selling them in India in a last-ditch attempt to g ain a presence after losing out to competition from Nokia, and home-grown brands Micromax and Karbonn. In entry-level smartphones, Samsung has thrown a big chal lenge to all by launching multiple models in the sub- Rs 10,000 segment running on Google's popular Android smartphone operating system. Even smartphone brands like Acer and Dell are significantly pruning their presen ce in the Indian market after failing to crack it. Dell, which last year built a portfolio of 4-5 smartphone models in India such as Dell Venue and Dell XCD35, is planning to exit the market altogether, according to a Dell India spokesperso n. Acer, on the hand, will have a minimal presence that is restricted to the premiu m smartphone segment. A senior Acer India executive recently said that it will g o slow in the Indian mobile phone market and will have a limited number of model s. However, an email sent to Acer India remained unanswered. The Taiwanese hardw are major, which had ventured in India last year with 10 smartphone models, curr ently has four models. As per market estimates, Sony, Motorola, LG, Acer and Dell each has less than a 2% volume market share in a cell phone market in which Nokia is the market lead er with a 23% share in the January to March quarter. The Finnish handsets maker is followed by Samsung with a 14% share and Micromax at third position with 5.8% . "Consumers in the entry and mid-segment tend go for models that offer more featu res at a compelling price; this is the reason for the churn in the market," says Himanshu Chakrawarti, chief executive officer at The MobileStore, India's large st mobile phone retailer with 900 stores. "As a result, several global brands lo st out in India and are now turning to the high-value smartphone segment," he ad ds. Sony, which was popular in India with its Walkman series of feature phones, will no longer make or sell such models from September. "The smartphone strategy has strengthened the brand and this is evident in the last couple of quarters, when Sony grew faster than the market," says Sony Mobile Communications India market ing head Prasun Kumar.

Sony claims to have become one of the top three players by value in the Indian s martphone market with this strategy. The Japanese major, who last year bought ou t its global partner Ericsson in the handset business, says its latest smartphon es will be distinctive with features like gaming, music, camera imagery and even water-resistance. Korean consumer durables major LG has failed despite numerous attempts to replic ate its durables business success in the Indian cellphone market, even though it had ambitions to become one of the top three handset brands in India. Retailers stocking LG's cell phones reveal that only five models are available in the mar ket compared to 10-15 it used to have.

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