Around 50 million mobile phones were shipped into the Indian market for the period January - March 2012, which also includes 2.7 million smartphones, up 9.1% year-on-year, according to a report by Cyber Media Research. This is more than the 45.75 million average handsets shipped in 2011 (183 million for the full year), also keeping in mind that the September-December quarter usually sees inordinately high shipments, owing to the festive season. Note that the research firm uses the term ‘shipments’ to describe the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers; or in case of handsets imported into the country, it represents the number of handsets leaving the first warehouse. Shipments are not necessarily representative of demand, but more about the supply. MediaNama is not in a position to verify the accuracy of the findings. For Jan-March 2012 - Overall shipments: In the overall India mobile handsets market, Nokia retained leadership position with 23% share, followed by Samsung with 14.1% and Micromax with 5.8%, in terms of sales (unit shipments) during the period. In the calendar year 2011, Nokia was the leader with a 31% share, followed by Samsung with 15% and Micromax with 5%, in terms of sales (unit shipments). - Smartphone shipments: In terms of Smartphone shipments, in the quarter, Samsung was the biggest player with a share of 40.4%, followed by Nokia with 25.5% market share and RIM (BlackBerry) with 12.3%. So it looks like Nokia is losing smartphone market share after the launch of its…
