India to ship 265 million mobile phones in 2016

India is planning to ship 265 million mobile phones in 2016 of which 116 million would be smartphones says CMR.   

CMR’s India Monthly Mobile Handset Market Review Report for Q3, 2016 revealed that by the end of September 2016, India shipped 197.5 million mobile handsets, of which 78.4 million were shipped during the third quarter of the calendar year. 

Commenting on the major trends witnessed, Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst for Telecoms at CMR said, “All these years, smartphone makers have been focusing on making the handsets affordable for more and more hands-on experience. This has paid off well, but cannot promise continuous sustainable growth for smartphones in the country. Time has come when the things need to be looked at holistically and increase the relevance of smartphones in the lives of wider user base. That will spur the era of next growth for smartphones.”

“There is a mismatch between the technology roadmap and the user priorities.  While the ecosystem is working on to make data services more affordable, accessible and meaningful for the subscribers, the majority is still looking for a reliable voice communications. This is forcing even a future ready network like Jio to work on innovative models of launching VoLTE-enabled 4G feature phones to tap the voice potential. For this no single entity in the ecosystem is to be blamed, but we have to share the responsibility collectively,” added Kawoosa. 

Going forward, the report cautions that while the handset vendors in particular have a pivotal role in ‘Connecting India’, there is an immediate need for them to ‘Connect with India’ as well and understand the requirements of the users to align their product roadmaps with the expectations of actual users.