The number of phone launches more than doubled in the first half of 2014 compared with the first half of 2013, according to a study by 91mobiles.com, a gadget research website for mobile phones and personal technology. It’s a big battlefield where Indian brands dominate, with a market share of 80 per cent. It’s still the entry-level sector which makes up the majority of the market — in smartphones, it accounts for 64 per cent of the launches. Indian brands lead the ₹5,000-15,000 segment in terms of number of launches. Micromax is the only Indian brand among the 10 top brands to have launched phones priced above ₹15,000. Samsung topped the list of the 10 most popular brands and Nokia XL topped the list of popular smartphones.
91mobiles.com relied on its database and user behaviour on the website to draw these conclusions. All devices made available for sale by online stores are considered as devices ‘launched’ in the Indian market and different storage variants of the same device are considered as separate products for the purpose of this report. Data from the January to June 2014 period has been covered for this report.