The recently published IDC report on Indian Mobile Market flashes many hidden happenings which is going to unfold in next 6 months. It’s encouraging that Nokia came back to top 5 players of Smartphone with average monthly shipment of 350K cornering 6% of Smartphone market. Prior to Nokia Device acquisition by Microsoft, Microsoft played smart move by using Nokia as vehicle to launch Android Smartphone to recapture lost ground and they succeeded a bit. Given the released shipment and timing of their Android enabled Smartphone clearly indicate that the adoption was lukewarm.
In the meantime, their Feature Phone shipment went down drastically and that impacted their overall device market share which is currently at 13%. Interestingly, domestic player’s calibrated focus on both Smartphone and Feature Phone brought them in striking distance to claim 2nd position in Indian device market.
Post Microsoft acquisition, their consumer campaign turned to focus technological superiority and highlight prosumer benefits such as document editing and all. They missed to capture that those target segment is already captured by iPhone and Samsung high end devices.
With the growth reviving and Nokia Chennai plant taxation issue will limit them to continue procuring device from the plant and would be forced to procure it from their manufacturing plant or partners located in APAC region. It is going to squeeze their operating margin as Nokia device segment major strength in Feature phone market is very low end devices where domestic player are positioning their products aggressively. In my point of view, Microsoft owned Nokia device is going to lose their 2nd spot very soon and I feel that Q3, 2014 Mobile tracker will show that. I would not be surprised that if that happen in Q2 only.
