According to the report published in Business Today on March 2, 2013 which is based on the GFK's urban market retail report on smartphones, Samsung is still the leader in the smartphone market although its market share has fallen to 35.8 per cent in December 2012 from its high volume of 46.4 per cent it held in July 2012. The consumer durable giant from Korea is greatly threatened by not only its global rivals like Apple, Nokia and HTC but also by the domestic manufacturers like Micromax, Karbonn and Lava. The market share in the smartphones market has seen a combined rise from 4.2 per cent to 12.1 per cent according to the same report. Samsung is making an all out effort to retain its market status in smartphone sales in the Indian market. Samsung has gone to the extent of lowering the price of its most selling brand Galaxy S3 over the past few months to beat the competition from its rivals. It has launched Samsung Galaxy Grand with 5" inch screen to compete with its rivals with the similar screen size smartphones. If Samsung has to compete with the domestic manufacturer Micromax's recently released A116 Canvas HD with 5" inch screen, it might have to lower the price of Samsung Galaxy Grand from is present price of Rs.21,500 since its 5" screen rival from Micromax created ripples in the phone market selling 9000 handsets within 24 hours at Snapdeal when released during second week of February, 2013. Samsung has also launched its REX series to beat the competition from Nokia's Asha series. Apple is strengthening its position with 6.7 % share and HTC is following with 5.7 % share. Nokia is trying to regain its image by bringing in its high end Nokia Lumia and also affordable Lumia Window 8 phones. The Indian phone market is growing at around 80 % per annum and is soon going to be the world's third largest smartphone market. The smartphones market is turning very volatile day by day and it would be difficult to predict who will be the winner in future since the buyers are becoming less and less brand sensitive.
I could not get the individual phones sales data of different manufacturer's. But going by the market share, we can say that Samsung Galaxy S3 is the leader. It would be pertinent to note that Gfk's panels cover about 4378 cities with population of at least 50000 to compile its data. Gfk has even extended its cover to over 600000 Indian villages.
"Teaching is my passion & sharing of knowledge is my motto"
Sukhdev Singh
Lead Editor & Platinum Member at ISC
