New mobile phone brands find a home in India

They have almost all the required features, are affordable and have been given the looks of a high-end phone. The mobile phone market has seen a visible growth in the past couple of years, with global mobile phone brands flooding the Indian market and Indian brands popping up almost every day. But how is the competition, have these new brands put up a decent fight with the existing market rulers?

How are these ‘budget friendly’ phones actually doing? “ Techcom mobile phones are available in 10 states now and are priced between Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 4,000. Our phones will be available in all the states by the end of this year.

We launched with seven handsets and will be launching two models by the end of March,” said Sandeep Kedia, director, Techcom.

“ The Indian market is growing and it is a gain for the customers. Every company has its own strategy to deal with the competition. At present, we enjoy a market share of 23 per cent in terms of value and hope to maintain our position,” said Ruchika Batra, general manager for Southwest Asia, Samsung.

Buyers who want to experiment are going in for new products. The new brands are stylish, provide various features and are affordable, too. This is a positive for buyers who cannot afford the high- end products, a dealer pointed out on condition of anonymity.

“ There are many brands in the Indian market and each one is vying for its own existence. International brands have their own target groups and Indians have their own. So, catering to the needs of specific audiences (both global and Indian brands) are doing well. In less than two years, a group of Indian brands have accumulated 14 per cent of the mobile handset market from multinational corporations and are still doing well. This has happened when the market has expanded from about eight million handsets per month two years ago to 10 million a year ago and almost 15- 16 million now,” said S. N. Rai, co- founder and director, Lava International Ltd.

India being a growing market and the consumers willing to experiment there’s a good deal of hope for the new comers. “ We have got encouraging response ever since our foray into the mobile handset market in December 2010. We have sold around one lakh units in the last three months,” said Kedia.

Techcom projects to gain a market share of two to three per cent in the GSM phone category in 2011- 12. Lava also has some new plans, “ In the last two months we sold around eight lakh units. Our products are available in 50,000 stores across the country and we will be introducing more than 30 products by the end of this year,” said Arvind Jha, director, Lava International Ltd.

Lava at present is available in five different series, with four to five models in each series. The prices range between Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 6,000.