Samsung, the South Korean electronics giant is planning to exit the feature phone market in India, a report in The Economic Times has said.
According to the report, Samsung’s last batch of feature phones is set to be manufactured by Dixon in December this year. After that, the company will not make any more feature phones in India. It is being said that Samsung will shift its focus to higher price tiers. The ET report cites a person familiar with the matter as saying that Samsung will launch smartphones mostly about the Rs 15,000 price bracket moving forward.
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Samsung is among two major MNCs to contribute to the government’s Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme. Samsung, according to ET, is mandated to get sops only on production of handsets worth over Rs 15,000 factor price. “Samsung has spoken to channel partners and said that they will exit the feature phone business in the next few months or by this year’s end,” a source was quoted by ET as saying. Samsung did not respond to a request seeking comment on the matter.
Feature phones have been on the decline in India. According to a Counterpoint Research report, the market saw a 39 percent year-on-year decline in the first quarter of 2022. Samsung, which was leading the market till a few years back now falls behind Itel and Lava in the feature phones market, the Counterpoint Research report said.
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The ET report says that the basic phone segment contributed to just 1 percent in value and 20 percent in volumes for Samsung till March end. Samsung executives told ET that the company expects to grow in double digits in Q2 2022. In Q1 2022, Samsung was the best-selling brand with a 22 percent market share, dethroning Xiaomi to become the market leader in the Android segment.
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