After EMIs, Samsung offers cash back to woo smartphone buyers

After launching EMI scheme, Korean electronic giant Samsung is now offering 15 % cash back on its flagship 'Galaxy' range, as it tries to induce customers to upgrade to high-end phones. "The strong success that we are garnering with zero % finance-based offers encouraged us to offer the 15 % cash back offer with Standard Chartered and ICICI Bank," Samsung Vice President (Mobile) Asim Warsi told PTI.

The offer will be valid on Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Grand, Galaxy Tab2 as well as Galaxy Camera, he added.

     
The company has been promoting its Galaxy smartphone models through finance offers since the beginning of the year, following a similar move by iPhone maker Apple.

     
Apple saw a strong uptake in the Indian market, following the introduction of EMI scheme.

     
For Samsung, EMI offer helped it more than double its finance-linked sales in January-March period.

     
Samsung, which has over 43 % share of the Indian smartphone category, has sold more than one crore Galaxy devices in the country in 2012.

     
According to CyberMedia Research (CMR), more than 221 million handsets were shipped to India in 2012.

     
Though smartphones comprised a small chunk of the overall handset market at about 7 %, the high-end category grew at a robust 35.7 % to 15.2 million devices in 2012 from 11.2 million units in 2011.

     
Feature phones sales, on the other hand, grew 19.9 % to 206.4 million in 2012 from 172.2 million in the previous year.

Samsung was the category leader, followed by Nokia (13.3 %) and Sony (8.2 %), CMR said.