According to IDC, Nokia is losing market share in India. In fact, it is down to 36.3% from 54% in 2009, a disconcerting fall for an already beleaguered company that once held 70% of the India market. The IndiaTimes says Nokia is disputing the claims:
“The figures are way off the mark. They are not correct,” Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar told ET. “Nokia continues to do well in India across all segments,” the company said in a statement which questioned IDC’s figures and said that the so-called ‘shipments’ cited by IDC “were not equivalent to actual sales and market shares” . “According to IDC, the dual-SIM category accounted for 38.5% of the overall market. As per our estimates, the dual-SIM segment represents 22% of the Indian handset market currently,” Nokia said, adding that IDC did not count shipments from its Chennai factory.
IDC stands by its numbers, however, and until another independent survey finds otherwise, it’s hard to see who to trust. Nokia is losing market share to Blackberry and iPhone, which should be obvious to any casual observer. However, the massive market for lower-end feature phones represented by India is immense and companies like Samsung and Micromax are taking advantage of that fact to produce phones with 30-day batteries and a phone that doubles as a TV and AC remote. Then there’s this one from Spice:
Spice Mobile threw in an ultra-violet torch that would help detect counterfeit currency and has recently come up with a model with two memory cards that serve like double cassette decks of yore, allowing for easy transfer of data.
Clearly Nokia needs to hit the drawing board.