Recently, CMR and IDC came out with very different Smartphone shipment figure for Q1,14. All newspapers published IDC report today and brought cheer for many domestic Smartphone players. Many raises concern about falling feature phone shipment and put the blame squarely on falling Smartphone price point. In my point of view, Smartphone growth in India is still to come and expecting blowout quarter in second half of year. The recent months observed that all leading device manufacturers started flooding feature filled 3G device under $150 and high specifications premium Smartphone in the range of $250. The drastic fall in price point is going to propel the adoption of data centric device and thanks to Mobile operators for their changed goal of data centric product launches. The report highlighted that overall device shipment fall of 10% Q-o-Q and in one way indicating that India is shifting towards Smartphone.
I would like to highlight that the economic environment in India worsened at the start of 2014 and thanks to high CPI, WPI and high unemployment rate coupled with political uncertainty. The downturn in economy impacted the rural India the most and reduced the buying capacity of user. I strongly believe that post certain policy clarity and subsequent investment by Corporate is going to help generate jobs and will have cascading impact on India gadget buyers.
In my point of view, IDC projection of 80.57 million by year end is on the conservative side. I believe that with the economic revival on anvil as all indicators are positive side coupled with low price point offering from all major Smartphone player is going to attract new as well as replacement market. Needless to say that India will definitely observe spike in feature phone shipment too. The expected bumper Q3, 14 holiday season will help India cross 100 million Smartphone shipment milestones. The trend is good news for budget and feature rich device manufacturer whereas will put margin pressure on global players.
