In the mobile handsets market dominated by a near 100 per cent ‘Total Awareness’ of multinational brands Nokia and Samsung, Indian consumers lapped up mobile phones with advanced features at affordable prices from new and emerging brands, reveals Mobile Handsets Usage And Satisfaction Study 2011 of over 972 Eastern India respondents conducted by CyberMedia Research (CMR).

Nokia captured the lion’s share of Eastern India consumers’ mindspace with a 65% top-of-mind recall (TOM), followed by Samsung and LG. However, in terms of ‘total awareness’ emerging handset brands are close on the heels of global brands.

While Nokia remained as the most well recognized brand in terms of ‘total awareness’ in Eastern India, new and emerging brands like Micromax, Maxx and Spice also managed to attract a large following here as in the rest of the country.

Among the established, global brands, Blackberry, LG and Samsung users, showed comparatively higher consistency in terms of perceptual loyalty translating into eventual loyalty. Users of new, emerging brands like Maxx, Lava and Karbonn showed equivalent levels of commitment.

Consumers rated ‘durability’ (28%) as the most important factor while buying a mobile handset, followed by ‘innovative features’ in the mobile handset (14%), ‘value for money’ (12%) and ‘brand preference’ (11%).

Amongst the established brands, a majority of Blackberry users (64%) felt their handsets provided ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’ value for money, followed by HTC users (54%) and Motorola users (53%). Amongst new, emerging brands Spice users (63%) showed the maximum score on the same attributes. Other new, emerging brands like G’Five (54%) and Maxx (47%) closely follow this trend. ‘Satisfaction with overall performance’ followed a similar pattern,