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Samsung’s online smartphone business has grown by over 100 per cent compared to last year in value terms, as the company claimed to maintain a 25 per cent market share in the B2C online market.
“Not only are we maintaining that, but we will also continue to do so in the latter part of the year on the back of the new models that we're launching,” Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Mobile Business, Samsung India, told BusinessLine . The company will launch two new models, the M30s and the M10s, along with an additional variant to the existing M30 smartphone ahead of the upcoming Diwali festive season.
Further, the company expects to sell over two million smartphones on online channels in the festive period leading up to Diwali and generating more than ₹ 3,000 crore worth of gross merchandise value. The M Series is expected to drive most of these sales volumes.
Warsi believed that online sales are far from plateauing and claimed that Samsung is driving “a large part of the online channels’ growth in India”. It (online market) maintains healthy double-digit growth of over 20 per cent,” he added.
Further, Warsi also said that the company’s portal, Samsung.com, is growing over 200 per cent, “year-to-date". “Our (site) samsung.com has also had a big makeover this year — on the platform side, on the user interface, on our delivery and logistics capabilities,” he said.
Optimistic on growth
Echoing the views of other smartphone manufacturers, Warsi said that there is a growth clip everywhere for the smartphone category, despite the slowdown in the other sectors. He also said that business is good for Samsung in India. “Business in India is growing, whether it's in the offline or the online world,” he said. Commenting on fears of a slowdown in the tech industry, fuelled by reports of multiple lay-offs at Samsung itself, Warsi said they were “misplaced”.
The M series from Samsung straddles the mid-range segment, with prices broadly ranging from ₹10,000 to ₹20,000. “The ₹10,000 to ₹16,000 bracket is perhaps the fastest-growing part of the market, which is great because it shows a lot of consumers wanting to upgrade and seek better experiences,” Warsi said.
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