The South Korean player enjoys a clear lead over its Finnish rival in the smartphone sweepstakes currently but there are quite a few curveballs to come in the hyperactive mobile phone market before a clear winner can emerge.
Until as recently as 2008, Nokia had an invincible lock on the mobile phone market in India. The Finnish giant was by far the strongest Richmond in the field, controlling a humongous 75% of the Indian mobile handset market by volume. But over the next couple of years, even as the handset market was going through a watershed technological change and churn, Nokia made the mistake of taking its eyes off the emerging market trends and has had to pay a heavy price for the lapse.
By the time it realised its mistake, the South Korean major Samsung had already taken the market by storm, introducing a whole new dynamic to the Indian mobile phone market: smartphones, which have operating systems just like PCs (with Android being the most popular). The past two years have seen Samsung make hay and sunshine of the Indian handphone market while Nokia has been left to nurse a bloody nose in the smartphone sweepstakes.
From the staggering peak of its market leadership four years ago, it has seen a heartbreaking fall with its current market share declining to 31%. In comparison, Samsung’s share in the volume game has moved up from 5% to 28% over the past two years alone, according to a research report by Cyber Media.
The cardinal sin Nokia made was to forget that technology is ephemeral in nature. So when smarphones became the hottest flavour in the handset business, Nokia was caught napping. So far it had played the market on the strength of its feature phones and had nothing equivalent to offer in the sizzling smartphone category. Its Symbian platform looked antediluvian and anachronistic in comparison to Samsung’s offerings on Google’s Android.
Unlike Nokia, Samsung had abandoned the Symbian OS early on and succeeded in developing leading-edge handsets using multiple operating systems. At the same time, it developed its own operating system – called Bada – to push smartphones into the mid-market and cannibalize the feature-phone segment. It was also quick to launch several attractive models on Google’s Android platform, which helped it gain global market leadership in the smartphone segment.
The Korean tech giant with an estimated revenue of roughly $200 billion globally started its tech world ascendancy in late 1980s and ’90s as a component manufacturer and supplier of DRAMs, and other flash memory chips for companies like GE and (its love/hate partner/foe) Apple Inc. In the ’90s, once it got the hang of basics like DRAMs, and LCD displays, it quickly scaled its electronics business, investing big sums to create economies of scale and outprice the competition.
On the strength of its broad product portfolio, differentiated retail and multiplatform strategy Samsung has, in recent years, gone about breaking Nokia’s hegemony and its premium brand perception. Nokia’s fortunes have been in reverse gear as it’s two biggest markets – China and India – have gone on to lap up the feeding frenzy over smartphones.
Today, Samsung has a clearly established lead in the lucrative and rapidly growing smartphone category with 43% market share as compared to Nokia’s 23%, according to a CyberMedia Research report. The saving grace for Nokia is that it’s still the overall market leader in the Indian mobile handset market with Rs.119.25 billion revenue and a 38% overall handset market share, compared to Samsung’s 25.3% share and Rs.78.90 billion in revenue. But there is no denying the fact that the tide has clearly turned Samsung’s way, as there’s no good alternative yet to its smartphone dominance in the Rs.312.15 billion Indian mobile handset market (some other industry estimates put it around Rs.550 billion).
Until as recently as 2008, Nokia had an invincible lock on the mobile phone market in India. The Finnish giant was by far the strongest Richmond in the field, controlling a humongous 75% of the Indian mobile handset market by volume. But over the next couple of years, even as the handset market was going through a watershed technological change and churn, Nokia made the mistake of taking its eyes off the emerging market trends and has had to pay a heavy price for the lapse.
By the time it realised its mistake, the South Korean major Samsung had already taken the market by storm, introducing a whole new dynamic to the Indian mobile phone market: smartphones, which have operating systems just like PCs (with Android being the most popular). The past two years have seen Samsung make hay and sunshine of the Indian handphone market while Nokia has been left to nurse a bloody nose in the smartphone sweepstakes.
From the staggering peak of its market leadership four years ago, it has seen a heartbreaking fall with its current market share declining to 31%. In comparison, Samsung’s share in the volume game has moved up from 5% to 28% over the past two years alone, according to a research report by Cyber Media.
The cardinal sin Nokia made was to forget that technology is ephemeral in nature. So when smarphones became the hottest flavour in the handset business, Nokia was caught napping. So far it had played the market on the strength of its feature phones and had nothing equivalent to offer in the sizzling smartphone category. Its Symbian platform looked antediluvian and anachronistic in comparison to Samsung’s offerings on Google’s Android.
Unlike Nokia, Samsung had abandoned the Symbian OS early on and succeeded in developing leading-edge handsets using multiple operating systems. At the same time, it developed its own operating system – called Bada – to push smartphones into the mid-market and cannibalize the feature-phone segment. It was also quick to launch several attractive models on Google’s Android platform, which helped it gain global market leadership in the smartphone segment.
The Korean tech giant with an estimated revenue of roughly $200 billion globally started its tech world ascendancy in late 1980s and ’90s as a component manufacturer and supplier of DRAMs, and other flash memory chips for companies like GE and (its love/hate partner/foe) Apple Inc. In the ’90s, once it got the hang of basics like DRAMs, and LCD displays, it quickly scaled its electronics business, investing big sums to create economies of scale and outprice the competition.
On the strength of its broad product portfolio, differentiated retail and multiplatform strategy Samsung has, in recent years, gone about breaking Nokia’s hegemony and its premium brand perception. Nokia’s fortunes have been in reverse gear as it’s two biggest markets – China and India – have gone on to lap up the feeding frenzy over smartphones.
Today, Samsung has a clearly established lead in the lucrative and rapidly growing smartphone category with 43% market share as compared to Nokia’s 23%, according to a CyberMedia Research report. The saving grace for Nokia is that it’s still the overall market leader in the Indian mobile handset market with Rs.119.25 billion revenue and a 38% overall handset market share, compared to Samsung’s 25.3% share and Rs.78.90 billion in revenue. But there is no denying the fact that the tide has clearly turned Samsung’s way, as there’s no good alternative yet to its smartphone dominance in the Rs.312.15 billion Indian mobile handset market (some other industry estimates put it around Rs.550 billion).
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