Upper end of the spectrum

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As a series of high profile swanky, feature rich phones rush to India, they could add a new chapter to the Indian mobile phone boom story. New stars include Apple’s iPhone, Nokia N96, Sony Ericsson’s Xperia, Samsung’s Omnia and HTC Touch Diamond. A big chunk of them carry a price tag of over Rs 25,000 and many more such high-priced phones are on anvil. Vendors including Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, HTC and LG are promising five to eight models by the end of the year. Analysts like Gartner expect high-end phone sales to grow faster than basic phones this year.

Interestingly, the action till now has been limited to the unglamorous end of the scale —barebone handsets priced under Rs 5,000. Excitement is now building up in phones with price tags of Rs 25,000 and above. Hottest applications in this space include music, internet access, push mail, maps, and social networking. If you exclude the designer phones, studded with diamonds and sapphires, most vendors seem to be betting big on smartphones with entertainment features in the high-end segment.

Competition is sure to go up. A few weeks before the launch of Apple’s iPhone in the Indian market, Nokia managing director D Sivakumar announced a study to understand the market for touch phones in India. Interestingly by the time iPhone hit the Indian market, Nokia had decided to launch a touch phone. And retailers are taking note too.

“Perhaps Nokia misunderstood the power of touch screen in smartphone category and iPhone has forced them to rethink their strategy,” says Pawan Marodia who runs a mobile retail store, National Radio Products. Analysts believe that the price of the Nokia touch phone would be in high midrange—that should mean Rs15,000-20,000. Most expect it to be much lower than iPhone’s price in the Indian market.