Indian Mobile Phone Market grew 12% in Units shipped in July-September Quarter of 2011

According to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) Quarter 3 2011 Mobile Phone Tracker release, the Indian mobile phone market grew 12% in units shipped in the July-September quarter of 2011 to clock 47.07 million units. Year-on-year too, there was a shipment growth of 13.8%.

The shipments were propelled by the dual-SIM handsets, which grew by 25.2 per cent over the previous quarter (April-June).

The mobile phone shipments witnessed a spurt, as vendors built channel inventories ahead of a long festival season. Dual-SIM handset shipments were notable with a sequential growth of 25.2% over the previous quarter(april-June quarter). However there was a sharp decline in the mobile service subscription adds during July-Sept 2011.

Nokia grew its share of overall mobile phone shipments during July-Sept by 6.8% over the previous quarter, Samsung succeeded in increasing its smartphone shipment share by 5% over the same July-September quarter.
Nokia had 31.8% of the mobile phones shipment share, followed by Samsung at 17.5% in the quarter of July-Sept 2011. In the smartphone segment, Nokia still led with a shipment share of 35.3%, but Samsung came closer at 26%.

According to the release, the overall, smartphones shipment for the India market showed an impressive growth of 21.4% over the previous quarter and 51.5% year-on-year. This helped the segment grow its contribution to the mobile phone shipment to 6.5% in third quarter from 5.6% in the second quarter.

From an operating system (OS) perspective, Android overtook Symbian to emerge as the top platform in India for the first time, with a share of 42.4% of the smartphone market.

The platform (Android) saw a growth of 90% over the previous quarter. The Apple iOS consolidated further, with a 3.09% share of the smartphone market, compared to a share of 2.6% in second quarter (April-June) of 2011.

Several of the Indian and Chinese brands registered varying declines in shipments. However Spice and MAXX were notable exceptions and saw shipment growths of 34.1% and 10.5%, respectively in July-September) over the previous quarter of (April-June) 2011.