Top 10 mobile manufacturers in India by revenues

When it comes to revenues for the fiscal period 2010-11, Nokia still rules in India. For all the talk about Nokia’s share slipping away, it has held its own. There isn’t a drastic rise in Nokia’s revenues from the year before but there isn’t significant dip either. At best, Nokia’s India growth has hit a plateau.

India’s mobile handset as a whole has grown by 15% to Rs. 33171 crores.

Top 10 manufacturers have contributed Rs. 23603 crores or 70% of the total revenues. Nokia has contributed to 39% of the total pie. Other mobile handset makers who are not in the top 10 list have generated a combined revenue of Rs. 10108 crores.

Top 10 mobile handset manufacturers by revenues in 2010-11 :

Nokia made Rs. 12929 crores in the year 2010-11. It made Rs 12900 crores the year before registering a 0.2% growth. In the ever expanding market, Nokia has held its own. Samsung has occupied a prominent second position with Rs. 5720 crores. India’s homegrown mobile handset manufacturer Micromax generated revenues of Rs. 2289 crores and is placed below Samsung. Research in Motion, LG, G’Five, Karbonn, Spice, Maxx and Sony Ericsson are the other vendors in the top 10 list who have revenues more than 600 crores.

There was a talk of G’Five unseating Nokia from its top position. I fail to see how that is possible. G’Five has generated revenues of Rs. 1326 crores in 2010-11. Which means, Nokia is at least 10 times bigger than G’Five in terms of revenues. Of course, G’Five has its mega plan and it isn’t half bad. 

G’Five has manufacturing capacity to produce 5 million handsets every month. It has a product portfolio of 300 models and it can launch 2 new models every week. G’Five can go from ideation to delivery in just 45 days. That gives a unique advantage for G’Five over many of its rivals. In 2011, G’Five is selling 2.3 million cell phones every month which translates to Rs. 6720 crores in sales.

By all means G’Five can be the number one manufacturer by 2014. But sales doesn’t mean revenues. As far as revenues go, G’Five is far behind Nokia. G’Five typically concentrates on the low-end of the spectrum and the profit margins are quite low at that price points. Nokia on the other hand is a trusted name from feature phones to smartphones. Nokia’s Achilles heel at the low-end of the market is the Dual SIM phones. A grave blunder by Nokia has fetched great returns for G’Five and Micromax.

Nokia is amending this by its recent launch of dual SIM phones for emerging markets. New dual SIM product portfolio should stem some of the bleeding. But that pain will not go away completely. But to say, Nokia is out of the loop and companies like G’Five will oust Nokia from its top seat is outlandish. Next time around we just shouldn’t count the number devices shipped.

If we leave Nokia and Samsung out, the other 8 manufacturers have a combined revenue of Rs. 10134 crores, much less than Nokia’s Rs. 12929 crores. Isn’t that something to ponder on?

Note : G’Five has a revenue of Rs. 1326 crores which puts it above LG at 5th position. ET has put G’Five at sixth position. Either G’Five has revenues less than Rs. 1210 crores, or it should have been in fifth place pushing LG down.