December 24 2011: Mobile phones which saw a slowdown in India sales earlier in 2011, are picking up momentum in the last quarter -- and while smart phones are doing well, their number is still a small fraction of basic or feature phones.

Dual-SIM and multi-SIM handsets were 55.8% of total mobile handset shipments in India. The number of mobile phones sold touched nearly 135 million units in the first 9 months of calendar year 2011 with higher than usual shipments by vendors in the July – September period. Nokia retained leadership position with 30% share in terms of sales (unit shipments), followed by Samsung at second position with 11.6%, during the month of September 2011, according to data released this week by Indian analysts CyberMedia Research. The overall India mobile handsets market recorded aggregated shipments of 47 million units during the July-August-September 2011 quarter, thereby registering a 12.5% sequential growth on account of large number of new launches.
Smartphone shipments touched 7.9 million units in first nine months of calendar year 2011. During the month of September alone smart phones shipments crossed 1 million units.
“In the coming months the India smartphones market is expected to become even more crowded as more vendors, particularly those from India and China, look to add these devices to their portfolio”, says Tarun Pathak, Analyst, Monthly Mobile Phones Market Review Programme, CyberMedia Research Telecoms Practice.