Upper end of the spectrum

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: according to research firm Gartner.

About 95 million mobile phones were sold in India last year and total shipments are expected to go up to 130 million in 2008, according to Gartner. And feature-rich smartphones would account for about 8% this year, up from 4.5% in 2007. “Growth rate of high-end phones this year will be much more than the basic phones. Overall handset market will grow by 25 to 30%,” says Anshul Gupta, principal analyst, Gartner India.

Selling proposition in the high priced handsets are clearly not the same as basic phones. Memory cards, high mega pixel camera or making it 3G-enabled will not be enough. Ajay Sharma, country head of HTC India thinks that only concentrating on hardware will not provide much leeway for the handset makers and user interface, form factor and applications would be the key differentiating factors.

Till now, Nokia’s simple user interface, iPhone’s touch screen and Blackberry’s push mail excited the consumers. “We have seen the vendor’s only aim these days is to increase the sale of the handsets. In 2009-10, it will be more of providing cutting edge applications along with good interface and form factor,” predicts Sharma.

Already, one is seeing reduction of the phone size and weight in business phones. Industry seems hungry for good applications. That could be one of the reasons why vendors like Motorola and Samsung have created their own entertainment zones. While Motorola has its own Motomusic zone, Samsung has its fun club. Motorola bought sound buzz to manage their music store. Dutt suggests Samsung could have some kind of an exclusive relationship with music companies for providing best of the music to their consumers. Industry is currently mulling over several new business models. Interesting ones include offering new Bollywood releases to its customers free of cost for few days and the option of keeping it permanently by buying it online from a music store.