Mobile handset shipment to cross 75 mn in Q3: Cybermedia Research

Over 75 million mobile handsets are expected to be shipped in July-September quarter, helped by factors like, festive season, new product launches and anticipated commercial launch of Reliance Jio's 4G service, research firm CMR on Tuesday said.

According to the report, 65.9 million handsets were shipped in the second quarter, up over 24 per cent from January-March period.

About 37.3 million (56.5 per cent) feature phones and 28.7 million (43.5 per cent) smartphones were shipped in April-June.

Interestingly, feature phone shipment grew 27.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter, while that of smartphone was up 19.5 per cent.

"The third quarter would see record breaking performance due to several factors, including increased disposable income due to good monsoon and pay commission implementation for central government employees and pensioners," CMR said.

Also, other factors like festive season impact, product launches and the ensuing intense competition within the telecom operators as RJio inches closer to its commercial launch would help the growth in shipment, it added.

"Now onwards we are going to see a clear demarcation between new customer acquisition and the refresh among existing users of the phones," CMR Lead Analyst Telecoms Faisal Kawoosa said.

He added that smartphone shipments are growing on the back of new customers coming on board as well as refresh/upgrade by existing smartphone users.

"At the same time, as the mobile base expands to rural and tertiary regions of the country, we expect good traction for the feature phones as well," he said.

Samsung led the mobile phone market with 25.5 per cent share. It had 29.7 per cent share in the smartphone and 22.3 per cent share of the feature phone market in the second quarter of 2016.

Micromax ranked second with 13.6 per cent (overall) share and 14.8 per cent share of smartphone and 12.6 per cent of feature phone market.

Others in the top 5 included Intex (10.4 per cent overall share), Karbonn (9.6 per cent) and Lava (8 per cent), respectively.

The high-end smartphone segment (above ₹20,000 price band) registered 35 per cent growth during the quarter, with Oppo, LeEco, Asus, LG and Huawei benefiting the most, CMR said. PTI SR ABK