Samsung And Micromax Case Study

Introduction

Samsung and Micromax are locked in for the top two slots in India's growing Smartphone market but there's no clear winner. While one research agency says that home brand Micromax had doubting Samsung as the leader, another has kept the Korean major at the top of the list. Budget smartphone maker Micromax takeover Samsung Electronics Co Ltd in the fourth quarter as the leading supplier in India's booming smartphone market, research firm Canalys (UK based research firm) said Samsung disputed the rankings, saying it was still a clear leader in the category with a volume market share of 34.3 percent in the October-December 2014 quarter, citing data from market research firm GfK. Canalys said in its report published on Feb. 3 that Micromax

"The other report takes into account smartphone shipments. At Samsung we go by retail sales," Asim Warsi, marketing vice president of Samsung's India mobile business told Reuters. Samsung said it has a manufacturing facility in India, which could have resulted in a mismatch in calculating shipment levels."The number of smartphones we retail in India is more than double than that of the next player," Warsi said He did not say what percentages of Samsung’s smartphones are made in India. Samsung does not break out manufacturing numbers for smartphones. Industry sources said Samsung makes about 90 percent of all phones it sells in India locally. India, which has the world's second-highest number of mobile phone accounts after China, is the third-biggest market by number of smartphones sold. Low-priced smartphones are the top sellers in a country where many buyers are upgrading from feature phones. Canalys said Micromax’s performance was partly due to its continuing appeal to mobile phone users upgrading to smartphones. It estimated nearly a quarter of smartphones sold in India in the fourth quarter were devices priced under $100, while 41 percent of devices sold were in the

In mobile phone business, Samsung's share in smartphones sold is being squeezed by low cost handset vendors and by Apple in the premium segment. The company reported drop of 64% in operating profit from mobile phones to $1.80 billion in Q3 from a year ago.

Mobile business now giving for only 37% of the company's operating profit as compared with 75% in the Q1. It was declining consecutively for 5 quarters. The company ng its hopes of revival on the Z1, the first low-cost smartphone (Rs 5,999) which is running on an in house developed operating system called Tizen. "When it was launch, it is meet with demand better than expectations and showing very good uptakes and growth. We see Z1 model helping us fuel our growth in smart phones alongside our other devices," Warsi added.

Canalys' findings may well propel Samsung to enhance its product portfolio even as it continues to be criticized for high pricing its flagship devices, which have not moved the needle in the premium segment and not able to grow more where Apple has created a huge following with success of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Samsung added that the company will work on more variants to the Galaxy Core Prime and Grand Prime smartphones and launch it, which have been selling well at the affordable price segment, in the coming