Indian Telecom Sector

Highly divided Indian mobile handsets market is getting more players. Most of  them are Chinese and they are targeting the market left by grey market-sold, Non IMEI handsets, banned by Indian Govt due to security concern. Last to death-line for banning such handset is scheduled at Decemeber 1, 2009.

Worth Rs 26,000 crore Indian mobile handset market is mainly dominated by branded phones from Finland-headquatered Nokia (more than 50%),  Sony Ericsson,  Samsung,  LG and Motorola. Apart from these high profile handset makers, some major brands like HTC, Haier, Bleu, Spice, Videocon, Philips and some smaller brands like Simoco, Kyocera, Sagem, Micromax, Fly, Huawei, Xenitis, GeePee, Usha also peep into this market.

RIM’s Blackberry services are offered on country’s most networks like Airtel, Reliance (CDMA & GSM), Vodafone, Tata Tele(CDMA & GSM), BSNL, MTNL, Idea, Aircel. And last but not the least, Apple’s iPhone also reached India via Airtel and Vodafone.

Some months ago, Essar Group entered the handset market via its The Mobile Store retail chain, introducing China-made ‘Ray’ branded mobiles, while TCL Corp launched its Alcatel branded handsets through The Mobile Store.

Unbranded Chinese handsets are popular to price-conscious Indians, as those offers high-end features at comparative low prices. At the same time these cheap handsets also have demerits to their own – no service center and no warranty, and if it stops working, it is really hard to get parts n chips to repair. And the lack of International Mobile Equipment Identity numbers in unbranded handsets makes them non-traceable and creates security concerns.As a good percentage of people are using it, mobile operator are not likely to bar services, rather they want to implant a IMEI no to such handsets.

Chinese vendors are specialized in CDMA sector mostly, as a result equipment suppliers ZTE and Huawei already entered to India’s telecommunications market. ZTE, ranked among the top six mobile vendors globally has been selected by Russian telecom giant Sistema, which has partnered with Shyam Telelink, as a vendor for its pan-India roll-out of CDMA network. ZTE has sold over 25 million handsets in India through operators such as Reliance Communications, BSNL, Tata Teleservices and Vodafone. Now ZTE targets GSM handset market in India also.