Samsung Aims to Treble India Handset Market Share Within 18 Months

South Korea's Samsung has set itself a target of capturing 18% of the Indian mobile phone handset market by the end of next year and plans to open over 500 dedicated retail stores to promote its phones.

"We shall have over 500 retail outlets, of which 200 plus will be called privilege partners while 300 would be shop-in-shop. The year 2008 is going to be for promoting brand and retail marketing," Samsung Mobile Head Marketing Asim Warsi told The Economic Times newspaper.

The target represents sales of around 10 million handsets, and the company is increasing capacity at its factory in Manesar to 1.5 million units per year to take up some of the expected growth.

"This entire demand cannot be fulfilled by domestic capacity but certainly bulk of it will be met. For the business and smart phones, we shall be depending upon imports," added Warsi .

Nokia currently dominates the market, thanks in large part to an early decision to roll out retail and franchise outlets. Of the estimated 79,000 retail outlets in India selling mobile phones, Nokia has a presence in 72,000 of them.

Posted to the site on 2nd October 2007