Aiming at becoming the second-largest smartphone seller in India, homegrown dual-SIM mobile handset maker, Celkon Impex, is expanding its portfolio with two new smartphone devices across different price points. The company, at present, sells six smartphone models.
According to third-party data, around 50.2 million phones were shipped to India in the first quarter of 2012, of which 47.5 million were feature phones and 2.7 million smartphones. Samsung is currently leading the pack in the smartphones segment, followed by Micromax.
“Our idea is to play across the price points. We will be rolling out two smartphone launches – A22 with a 4.5-inch display and dual-core processor for sub-Rs 9,000, and a smartphone device for sub-Rs 4,000 next month,” Murali Retheneni, executive director of Celkon, told Business Standard.
The Hyderabad-based company, which claims to be the number one mobile devices seller in Andhra Pradesh, and third across the country, is also betting big on the tablet PC market. The company today introduced its second tablet Cel-Tab CT2, which is says is the first SIM-based tablet launched by any Indian brand.
“Taking advantage of the plummeting technology acquisition costs, we are planning to launch a nine-inch tablet in October in the price point of sub-Rs 10,000 in October,” he said, adding that the company was targeting to sell 50,000 smartphones and an equal number of tablets a month, thereby taking its total sales (including feature phones) to one million units a month by the first quarter of next year.
Stating that smartphone penetration in developed countries like the US and UK was at 40-50% right now, while it was less than 10% in BRIC countries in terms of volumes, Murali said the industry expected this to grow to the level of 20-25% in the next couple of years.
“We have just started selling smartphones and tablets in the market. We expect these two categories to account for 20% of our revenues by the end of March 2013,” he said, adding that the company garnered revenues of Rs 326 crore in the last financial year, and was progressing towards almost trebling it this year.
