India is probably the only country in the world, which is still witnessing tremendous growth in their mobile phone market. According to TRAI, India surpassed 1 Billion mobile phone subscribers in October of 2015, More than 50 million new mobile subscribers were added in first 10 months of 2015.
Obviously with that growth, the demand for mobile phones has also rocketed.
In 2015, at total 1622 new mobile phone handsets were launched – at an average nearly 5 new phones every single day. 91mobiles, a leading gadget research and comparison site, published these findings in their “Mobile phone landscape: India 2015” report.
Year 2015 witnessed 43 percent rise in the number of phones launched compared to 2014!
Out of 1622 mobile phones launched, 727 were feature phones and 895 were smartphones. Interestingly, feature phones saw much higher growth at 63 percent compared to 30 percent for smartphones. So, even though the demand for feature phones is reducing, brands are launching them in big numbers.
The Smartphones which come under Rs 5000 price category witnessed whopping 88 percent growth, whereas the smartphones over Rs. 5k category remained nearly the same with just 3 percent growth.
Over last 3 years, the smartphone prices are coming down, even though the specifications are getting far better. The interest of Indians for premium phones is dwindling. In 2013, 23 percent Indians had smartphones priced over Rs. 30k, in 2014 the same came down to 16 percent and in 2015 it fell to just 6 percent.
Not only the number of phones launched, but also the phone brands have increased tremendously over past 3 years. In 2015, 163 mobile phone brands were present in India, a rise of 72 percent over previous year. In 2013, India had just 68 brands.
Other interesting Highlights of the report
- Indian brands accounted for 65 percent of all mobile phones sold
- Brands are increasingly launching cheaper smartphones. Below Rs. 5k mobile phone category witnessed 75 percent growth in launches, whereas 5k-10k and 10k to 20k categories witnessed declines.
- Intex outnumbered all other brands in terms of number of mobile phone launches. They launched 88 new phones in 2015, whereas second placed Micromax launched 56. Samsung was the only international brand in top 10 with 30 new launches
- Samsung remained the most popular brand in 2015, whereas Lenovo jumped 15 places to rise to second position. Micromax was 3rd. YU and OnePlus debuted as popular phone brands in 2015 at 9th and 10th position.
You can check out the entire report by 91mobiles below
