India’s Handset Market – A Wealth of Opportunity
India is home to one of the fastest growing mobile phone markets in terms of penetration thanks to tectonic shifts which have taken place over the past decade.
Mobile subscribers grew from two million in 2000 to 840 million in 2013. Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) forecasts the handset market will reach 1.24 billion – one mobile phone for every person living in the country – within 2015.
Back in the early 2000s, mobile phones were typically only found in key urban centres and primary cities due to the low number of models in the market, high handset costs, expensive tariffs and limited network coverage.
The situation has changed recently with the entry of global brands and the emergence of home-grown manufacturers in the handset market. Wider availability of more affordable handsets, including smartphones, and significantly lower call rates has catalysed growth in the market, most notably in rural areas. Competition within the crowded market is intense with more than 50 device manufacturers now selling their products. For operators, the greatest challenge moving forward would be when voice services start to migrate to data networks. Examples of these threats are the Viber, Skype type services. Currently, the quality of voice over data is still patchy and the consumer trade-off of cost & quality still is toward the latter. But, the trend can be seen in international telephony where voice over data adoption is increasing due to the high premium of international voice services.
