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Samsung targets 15 percent of India mobile market in 2008
By siliconindia
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Monday, 10 December 2007, 20:30 IST
New Delhi: Aiming big, Samsung Electronics is focusing on doubling its share of the Indian mobile phone market to 15 percent in 2008. The company hopes to sell at least 10 million handsets in the year, a senior official said.
"Globally, we are number two. In India, we are not number two. We want to go step by step and this is the first step," Asim Warsi, General Manager of GSM marketing at the South Korean firm's local unit, said after the launch of a new model. "Our current market share is about seven percent. We don't consider this market share yet," he added.
Commanding 14.5 percent of the global mobile market in the July-Sept quarter, Samsung pipped Motorola to second spot behind Nokia, which made more than a third of the 289 million phones sold worldwide in the period, said Gartner, a research firm.
Samsung will launch eight new models in India in the first quarter of 2008, including two entry-level phones, as part of its strategy to corner a greater share of Asia-Pacific's fastest growing mobile handset market. Samsung's focus would not be so much on cut-priced entry-level phones but on models with features such as color screens and FM radio, Warsi said.
"With rising income and purchasing power, can't a consumer in rural India migrate to colour phones?," Warsi asked, adding demand for phones with monochrome screens would shrink in the manner of that for black-and-white television sets.