India sells 10,000 mobiles phones every hour

New Delhi, Jun 19 (UNI) As mobile phone penetration increases in the country with cheaper handsets and call tariffs, an IDC India report today brought out that every hour as many as 10,000 mobile phones are sold in the country.

Close to 85 million mobile handsets were shipped to the country between April 2007 and March 2008 as compared to under 66 million units shipped in the previous fiscal, a growth of about 29 per cent, IDC's Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker said.

''This growth comes on the back of a burgeoning mobile services market and lower entry barriers across various customer categories, as average selling values of handsets continue to fall in the wake of a highly competitive landscape populated by close to 25 vendors,'' IDC India Country Manager Kapil Dev Singh said in a statement.

The Q4FY08 figures indicate that shipment touched 22.3 million, up by 24 per cent from 17.9 million units in the corresponding period of the previous year.

High-end phones saw an increased demand with EDGE and WCDMA-enabled mobile phones contributing 15.4 per cent and 3.1 per cent of the total mobile phone shipments in FY08 compared to 7.4 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively in FY07.

The report said the Finland-based handset manufacturer Nokia has the largest market share, of 52.8 per cent, followed by LG at 10.2 per cent and Samsung at 8.3 per cent in terms of units shipped during the Q4FY08.

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