Coimbatore: Launching the new Nokia Lumia 530 Dual SIM smartphone in Coimbatore, T S Sridhar, Director-Mobiles, Nokia India Sales Pvt Ltd, was impressed on how India has emerged as one of the largest market for smartphones globally and that Microsoft Devices Group (MDG) is optimistic about growing its market share in the country.
The company also ensured that whenever new software is introduced, it is made available to existing users of its handsets.
Speaking to mediapersons Sridhar said it was the youth segment that was driving the exponential growth of the smartphone market in India. The desire to stay connected and newer applications such as WhatsApp, Skype and the other freebees were fuelling this trend.
He said “Tamil Nadu is the biggest market for telecom in India†and interestingly it was not the metros but smaller cities such as Coimbatore, Pune and Hyderabad that were powering this growth.
Last year the country recorded sales of 44 million smartphones, and the number was likely to nearly double to 70-80 million units during the current year (Jan-Dec 2014). Dual SIM smartphones priced up to Rs 12,000 were expected to account for 82% of the sales. With rapid growth in data usage, telecom operators were reaping higher revenues.
According to Sridhar, earlier, smartphone prices ruled in the Rs 25,000 to Rs 40,000 range. Currently, the maximum sales were happening in the more affordable, Rs 4,000 to Rs 12,000 price band.
He said by the next year every third mobile phone sold in the country would be a smartphone. With nearly half the smartphone buyers in the 18-24 age group, his company had lined up a slew of products for this segment.
Recalling past, Sridhar said the first Lumia smartphone was priced around Rs 30,000. Now, there are 17-18 Lumia phones in the market, and the latest dual SIM Lumia 530 is priced at Rs 7,349.
The Lumia 530 is a 4-inch FWVGA LCD display with 854 x 480 pixels resolution, a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 and 512MB RAM, along with 4GB storage space with up to 128GB micro SD card support. The battery has up to 22 days standby, and 13 hours of 2G talk time. The battery capacity is 1430mAh.
The phone sports a 5-megapixels rear snapper and no front camera. The Lumia 530 will run the latest version of Windows Phone 8.1.