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K. Giriprakash

The company has ruled out plans to enter the CDMA market as it believes that the GSM market will continue to lead the segment.

Bangalore , Aug. 28

MOBILE phone maker Siemens has launched sub-Rs 5,000 phones which is expected to trigger off a price war in the lowest but the largest segment of the market.

In an aggressive push to take on its competitors, Siemens has also revamped its management team in India. Siemens expects to garner a 15 per cent share of the market in India in a year's time with the launch of low priced but high value mobile phones. It has tied up with mobile phone distributor Tech Pacific to market the phones in the country. But the company has ruled out plans to enter the CDMA market as it believes that the GSM market will continue to lead the segment.

"India is the largest emerging market in Asia and we want to take a big share of this market," Siemens Ltd's mobile phone division Executive Vice- President, Mr Peter Gartenberg, told Business Line.

"Though China continues to be the largest market in Asia, the growth rates are higher in India," he said.

He said a market research revealed that the sub-Rs 5,000 market was the largest and would continue to grow further.

"Hence we have lined up strong entry level products with powerful batteries to go with them," Mr Gartenberg said.

He said A50, A52, A55 series of entry-level mobile phones had been fitted with lithium ion batteries which are more powerful and have longer battery life than nickel cadmium batteries. He said the `A' series phones also had polyphonic ring tones, normally not found in low-end phones.

Mr Gartenberg said the grey market growth had shrunk considerably over the last few years and hence there was no threat from this segment for mobile phone makers any more. "Earlier the grey market constituted nearly 70 per cent of the entire market. But the trend has been reversed now," he said. This was largely because the customers are beginning to realise the need to have legal and guaranteed handsets, he said.

He said Siemens had also introduced higher-priced phones like the M55 at Rs 10,000 which also has a triband and S55 at Rs 14,000 and SL55 at Rs 24,000.

"These are extremely competitive prices because of their multiple features which are not normally found in other phones at such price levels," Mr Gartenberg said.

Mr Gartenberg said the board had taken a decision not to enter the CDMA segment as its market share in the entire mobile phone was not significant. "

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