Samsung ready to take on Blackberry

Samsung India, which claims to be number two in India, is planning to get into Blackberry's shoes. The company is expected to officially announce the launch of two handsets, one a touchscreen and another slider phone, in the business phone segment.

Samsung is also aiming to double its share in the Indian mobile phone market to 15 per cent in 2008, with expectations of selling around 10 million handsets. Samsung presently commands a market share of about 7 per cent.

According to Yuvraj Mehta, Samsung spokesperson in India, "We wanted to reach out to the imaging and business phone market in India and going for niche segments like enterprise users was the way ahead."

With a 14.5 per cent share of the global mobile market during the July-Sept quarter, Samsung has already toppled Motorola to grab the second spot, right behind Nokia, which made more than a third of the 289 million phones sold worldwide in the period, says research firm Gartner.

According an analyst, "The company had difficulty in broadening the customer base in India since it was focused on high-end handsets alone. But with the inclusion of smartphones for the enterprise users, it stands to diversify its customer base by expanding the products including a premium 5 megapixel camera phone."

According to Mehta, Samsung business phones would be priced below Rs 20,000 and have Windows operating system.

The Indian market, growing at around 40 per cent annually with an average 5 million new mobile connections every month, is a rich market for Samsung to sink its teeth in. Nokia presently dominates 70 per cent of the market since it entered in mid 1990s, making it difficult for competitors to get into the sector.

Asus Technology too had unveiled its plans to enter the Indian market last month by announcing two of its premium business phones.

Benson Lin, general manager, Asus (Asia-Pacific), indicated that in 2008 the company would announce several premium Asus PDA (personal digital assistants) phones.