Over 100M mobile handsets shipped to India during Jan-June, 2012; Nokia still market leader: CMR

The total number of mobile handsets shipped to India during the first six months of 2012 (January-June) crossed the 100 million mark to reach 102.43 million units. During this period, the number of smartphones shipped to the country stood at 5.5 million, according to a CyberMedia Research (CMR) report on the India mobile handsets market.

In terms of growth, the feature phone segment grew faster than the smartphone one and posted 16.9 per cent growth in the first half of 2012, compared to 12.2 per cent growth in the smartphone segment during the same period.

Nokia continued to rule the mobile handset market in India with 22.2 per cent share, closely followed by Samsung with 13 per cent and homegrown Micromax with 5.5 per cent. But for smartphones, Samsung was the clear market leader with 41.6 per cent market share, followed by Nokia (19.2 per cent) and RIM (12.1 per cent).

Also, out of the total smartphones shipped, Android was the most popular operating system with 56.4 per cent share, followed by Symbian (17.4 per cent), BlackBerry (12.1 per cent), Bada (8.5 per cent), iOS (3.0 per cent) and Windows Mobile (2.6 per cent).

"The first half of 2012 was witness to the high-decibel launch of Samsung Galaxy S III, HTC One X, etc. The second half continues to see the launch of a number of high value, aspirational smartphone models like Samsung Galaxy Note II and Apple iPhone 5. This push from vendors and the increasing maturity of the Indian mobile subscriber community are expected to further push up smartphones when it comes to total mobile handset shipments to the country during the next few quarters," said Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst of CMR Telecoms Practice.

Note that the term 'shipments' has been used to indicate the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. The report does not track the number of handsets personally brought into the country by users or the handsets sold in the 'grey market'.