Smartphone shipments grow 100% to account for 20% of total units; 3G phone shipments notch up 0.17 million units during the same period
Android continues to be the preferred OS for smartphones for a growing number of vendors
Colombo / New Delhi: Sri Lanka mobile handset shipments continue to show consistent growth in both the Featurephone as well as Smartphone segments, making it among very few South East Asian markets where growth was seen in both segments. This was revealed by CyberMedia Research in its quarterly report, CMR’s Sri Lanka Quarterly Mobile Handsets Market Review for 3Q CY 2014 (July-September 2014), released today.
In the overall Sri Lanka Mobile Handsets market, Nokia retained leadership position with a 22% share, followed by Micromax at second position with 19% and E-Tel at third position with 12%, in terms of sales (unit shipments) during 3Q CY 2014.
As per the CMR report, the market grew 11% quarter-on-quarter (3Q CY 2014 versus 2Q CY 2014), while comparing the growth with the same period for CY 2013, it grew 43% in unit shipment terms.
Commenting on the results for the quarter Tanvi Sharma, Sri Lanka Telecoms Analyst at CMR said, “The leadership positions are somewhat volatile and we see an ongoing tussle for the top slots every quarter. This indicates that the market is still adjusting to evolving user wants and preferences, and whichever brand serves the purpose best achieves the feat.”
“However, it is worth noting that the local brand E-Tel is in leadership positions for both the segments – featurephones as well as smartphones,” Tanvi added further.
Sri Lanka Smartphones Segment Performance
Smartphone shipment touched 0.2 million units in CY Q3 2014. Samsung emerged as the leader in Smartphone Segment with 20.6% followed by E-Tel with 17.7% market share in CY Q3 2014.
Featurephones
Sri Lanka featurephone shipments touched 0.8 million units in 3Q CY 2014. Again, Nokia emerged as the leader in the featurephones segment with a 25.7% share followed by Micromax with 20.1% share in 3Q CY 2014.
Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst for Telecoms at CMR said, “Though featurephone shipments have stagnated in the quarter, yet the market is heavily skewed towards them in terms of sheer numbers. Therefore, it is markets like Sri Lanka where handset vendors should introduce low cost smartphones based on OSs like Android One and Firefox.”
“I am very optimistic that the entry of low-cost OS-based Smartphones will bring about a strong increase in the sales of Smartphone in Sri Lanka,” Faisal concluded.
Notes for Editors
- This release is based on the CyberMedia Research (CMR) Sri Lanka Quarterly Mobile Handsets Market Review,
published at the conclusion of every calendar quarter.
- CyberMedia Research (CMR) uses the term “shipments” to describe the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. For the convenience of media, the term ‘shipments’ is sometimes replaced or used interchangeably with “sales” in the press release, but this reflects the market size in terms of units of mobile handsets and not their absolute value. In the case of handsets imported into the country it represents the number leaving the first warehouse to OEMs, distributors and retailers. CyberMedia Research does not track the number of handsets brought on their person by individual passengers landing on Sri Lanka soil from overseas destinations or ‘grey market’ handsets. These are, therefore, not part of the CyberMedia Research numbers reported here.
