KOLKATA, India (NNN-Bernama) -- Faced with severe competition within India, many mobile phone handset brands are exploring opportunities overseas, business analyst said Wednesday.
"Some Indian companies have established themselves as preferred low-cost handset brands. Scaling up shipments will enable them to have a sustainable local manufacturing facility," China's Xinhua news agency quoted Faisal Kawoosa, Analyst, Cyber Media Research, as saying on Wednesday.
Marketers like Karbonn, Maxx and Micromax have already ventured into neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. They are now looking for greener pastures in West Asia, Latin America and Commonwealth of Independent States.
Micromax is one of the largest selling Indian brands within the country and has already entered into the high-end handset markets of Saudi Arabia and Brazil.
Now it plans to enter Mexico and Argentina this year. The company has already carried out pilot projects in Nigeria and is now gearing up to launch tablets, handsets and datacards.
Karbonn Mobiles is the second largest brand, after Samsung, in Nepal. Now it is planning to expand its operations to West Asia, Latin America and the CIS.
"Global operations account for 10 percent of our revenues," said Sashin Devsare, Executive Director, Karbonn Maxx Mobiles, with a manufacturing facility at Hardwar in India's northern state of Uttarakhand, which has already entered Hong Kong, Nepal, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Fiji Islands. The company plans to expand its operations to Africa and Russia by August. The company has a sales office in Hong Kong to take care of overseas operations.
Most of the mobile manufacturers are opposed to the telecom carrier model in which handsets and talk plans are given together by mobile operators and they have come up with their own distribution networks in matured markets such as West Asia and Latin America.
Vikas Jain, Business Director, Micromax Informatics, said, "In most countries, we enter into distribution agreements with some regional distributor.
We intend to compliment the operators' strategies."
Hemant Joshi, Partner, Deloitte Haskins and Sales, felt that once the euphoria over the international foray subsides, it was for the vendors to provide "something different" and a more value-added product than those already available in these markets. -- NNN-BERNAMA
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