LESS DEMAND FOR BRANDED SMART PHONES

The rising demand for affordable smartphones in the major emerging markets of India and China has helped local mobile manufacturers surpass shipments by the established global brands like Samsung and Apple in April-June quarter this year, research firm IDC says. According to IDC data in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan region, homegrown vendors shipped 46 million units, while Samsung and apple combined shipped 35 million units in second quarter this year. Other global brands like HTC, BlackBerry, Nokia, Sony, LG and Motorala shipped a combined 10 million units, whereas, the internal vendors from China like Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo shipped a total of 27 million units in April-June 2013. IDC identified Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, Maxx and Intex as the rising players in the emerging smartphone market in India and brands like Coolpad, K-Touch, Xiaomi, Gionee and OPPO in China. The research firm said local brands in the world's two most populous country, part of Asia/Pacific (Excluding Japan) region (APEJ), have aggressively scaled up their operations and are competitive on both price and hardware specifications. "Aside from the top-tier international brands or Chinese brands that also ship globally like Huawei and ZTE, there is also a rising segment of homegrown brands, which as a group have been steadily rising in shipments and prominence," IDC said in its latest report on mobile shipments. These homegrown players comprised 38 per cent of second quarter 2013 volumes, up from 20 per cent in the same quarter of 2012 and seven per cent 2011 second quarter, it added. Asia/Pacific region saw mobile shipments of 119 million units in April-June 2013, up 10 per cent quarter-on-quarter and a huge jump of 75 per cent from Q2 2012, IDC said. "In emerging markets like China and India, IDC has seen many local competitors spring up, but only in the last few quarters have we seen them aggressively scale up, competitive on both price and hardware specs like bigger screens. "We are now hitting a place where there are smartphones for every price point, where the masses will benefit from the slew of players bringing in more options," the firm said. This is the first quarter that IDC saw both the under USD 50 segment of smartphones gain some traction in China. While, the 4 inch plus screen size segment drove most shipments, the 5-6 inch segment saw its first gain in both China and India, it added.