The Hindu Business Line : Mobile makers vie to grab large share of cell market

New arrivals
Sony Ericsson launches 4 new models.
Motorola plans handsets that would enable live TV streaming.
LG banking on offering feature rich phones.
Nokia to offer multimedia features with its N-Series.

New Delhi , Oct. 13

After having fought a fierce price war for capturing the Indian cellular handset market, mobile manufacturers are now falling over each other to attract consumers with a slew of new mobile phones using style, design and some hi-end features as differentiators.

Samsung, Ericsson, Motorola, LG and Haier are all lining up aggressive strategy to corner a larger share of the booming cellular market growing at 6 million subscribers a month.

Speaking to Business Line on the sidelines of Mobile Asia, Mr Sudhin Mathur, General Manager, Sony Ericsson India, said, "Price is no longer the differentiator as most handset manufacturers have low-end phones in the Indian market. For us music is definitely high on priority. We now have 8 Walkman-enabled phones and we are expanding that range. We are also capitalising on the popularity of blogging and have tied up with Google to enable users to upload their picture taken from our phone directly to the blogging site."

Sony Ericsson launched four new handset models on Friday taking the total to 24 new models this year.

The company is also expanding its experience stores to 50 locations apart from tying up with large retail chains such as Reliance and Pantaloon.

Motorola's mantra

"For Motorola the mantra is offering handsets that are well designed with cool technologies that are aggressively priced. We have got a market share that is in the double digits and we hope to improve it," said Mr Lloyd Mathias, Director Marketing - India, Mobile Devices, Motorola India.

The company has launched 18 models this year and three new models were introduced on Friday. It is planning to launch handsets that would enable live TV streaming. Motorola will begin manufacturing handsets in India next year out of its plant in Chennai.

Creating differentiation

Late entrants LG is banking on offering feature rich phones. Mr H.S. Bhatia, National Product Group Head, GSM Mobile Phones, LG India, said, "The share of black and white handset (dominated by Nokia) is coming down drastically and that's good news for us. We are creating a differentiation in the market with handsets that, for instance, enable consumers to use the phone in their own language."

LG is targeting to achieve sales of 20 million handsets by 2010.

Market leader Nokia is going all out on offering multimedia features with its N-Series.

Along with launching an array of multimedia devices, it is also strengthening its retail strategy by setting up Nokia Nseries experience zones in over 10 malls this year and another 10 by 2007.

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