New Delhi, Oct. 3: Telecom service providers are entering the Rs 30,000-crore handset market, dominated by global multinationals such as Nokia and Samsung.
"The market is huge and there is room for many Indian players," said Vinod Sawhny, executive director and CEO of Beetel Teletech Ltd. The company, which is part of the Bharti group, launched mobile phones last month.
"Phones in the price range of Rs 2,000-6,000 are witnessing a 30 per cent growth and we plan to offer a good combination of feature-rich phones at affordable prices," Sawhny said.
Videocon Industries has also forayed into the market. According to a report by Edelweiss Research, it has sold 300,000 handsets bundled with connections.
Tata DoCoMo, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Ltd, has recently introduced the OneTouch Net Phone — a Qwerty phone that has been co-branded with Alcatel and is bundled with Yahoo services.
"The OneTouch Net is an affordable solution targeted at the youth who want to stay connected to the Internet and information services on their mobile phones," said Deepak Gulati, president of GSM and 3G at Tata Teleservices.
"In recent quarters, several new players successfully launched devices at significantly lower average selling values in the price-sensitive Indian market. Such handsets found ready acceptance among first-time buyers, especially from small towns and villages," said Anirban Banerjee, associate vice- president (research), IDC India.
According to analysts, service providers enjoy the advantage of a distribution network, tariff bundling and offering customer-specific applications, which mobile manufacturers are unlikely to have.
"With telecom penetration going rural, service providers already have the retail reach. They have the option to bundle cheap call rates and plans along with the handset. They can also partner content providers for value-added services targeting specific customers," said telecom analyst Sudipto Basu.source:telegraphindia.com
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