Mobile phone market sales up 16% at 218 million in 2012

New Delhi: Mobile phone sales in India grew by 16 percent to 218 million units last year on the back of rising demand for smartphones, a study by market research group IDC said.

According to IDC's Asia Pacific quarterly mobile phone tracker, smartphone sales in the country grew by 48 percent to 16.3 million in 2012 against 11 million in 2011.

"The overall mobile phone market in India has reached approximately 218 million units, a 16 percent Year-on-Year growth from CY 2011," IDC said in a release.

This is mostly driven by the burgeoning smartphone market in India which grew from close to 11 million units in CY 2011 to 16.3 million units in CY 2012, a considerable growth of about 48 percent, it added.

"Local vendors ramped up shipments and aggressively launched new models to meet the growing consumer demand in the low-end smartphone market segment," IDC India Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) Manasi Yadav said.

Local vendors have remained dominant in sub-USD 100 price band while they pose serious competition to the global vendors in the USD 100-200 price band. These two segments emerged as the most vibrant and the fastest growing smartphone price band segments in the Indian market," Yadav added.

Android continues to be the dominant player in Indian smartphone market, however, rising demand of other operating systems ?- iOS and Windows Phone 8 -- is expected to spice things moving forward, IDC said.

On the outlook IDC said "This market is expected to continue its growth into 2013, driven by the stupendous growth of close to 70 percent in the smartphone market."

PTI