Samsung sees little impact from note ban on smartphone sales

Samsung has seen increased smartphone sales and a good 2016, with demonetisation failing to dent its sales.

According to Manu Sharma, Vice-President, Product Marketing (IM), Samsung Electronics, the company has been “seeing strong growth” – in sales by both value and volume — across its entire portfolio of mobile phones and “gained market share”. “2016 was one of best years, even better than 2015. As of now, 2017 is looking very promising,” he told BusinessLine during an interview.

Incidentally, as Sharma pointed out, demonetisation too has not seen much of an impact on sales.

November, post Diwali, is historically considered to be a slow month. But, sales picked up December onwards. Business grew in December (a month after demonetisation) when compared to the year-ago-period.

“Business came back to normal in December. Now, in January, we are seeing double digit growth,” he added.

Samsung claims to have a market share of 46.9 per cent by value (in case of smartphones) till December. This was 41 per cent at the beginning of the calendar year.

The comments come at a time when Indian handset vendors are complaining of falling sales (as high as 20-30 per cent drop in numbers) in the November-December period and stock pileups because of demonetisation. Recovery in the consumer sentiments is also expected to be slow.

Sharma maintained the company’s varied portfolio, deep distribution reach, and retailers’ will to adopt non-cash payment options like e-wallets or point-of-sale machines as main reasons for it see through the demonetisation phase.

Market sources and analysts agree.

According to Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst – Telecom at research firm CMR, pointed out that mobile phones below the ₹5,000 range are primarily sold in cash. Indian vendors have a strong play in the price range and sales were hit with demonetisation.

“Indian players faced issues with note ban because of their strong presence in the sub-5000 range. On the other hand, vendors like Samsung with a deep portfolio fared better,” he pointed out.

According to Sharma, the recent digitisation drive by the Centre is expected to help smartphone adoption.

“If consumer starts realising how central the smartphones are to a lot of transactions they do in daily lives, it will become a necessity. We clearly see that driving growth,” he maintained.

Samsung, Sharma said, is looking at a greater presence in the large screen – above 5.2 inches – and the premium (₹30,000-40,000) segments. The premium ₹30,000-40,000 market is mostly dominated by Samsung and rival Apple.

Sharma, who launched is “Galaxy C9 Pro”, pointed out that people were slowly getting more comfortable with large screen devices.