COLOMBO: Sri Lanka’s mobile phone sales reached one million unities in the third quarter of 2014 while smart phone shipment up by 100 percent which accounts for 20 percent of the total sales, a market report said.
“Sri Lanka mobile handset shipments continue to show consistent growth in both the Feature phones as well as Smartphone segments, making it among very few South East Asian markets where growth was seen in both segments,” said CyberMedia Research, a Market Intelligence and Advisory firm in its report.
The report says the market grew 11 percent in unit shipment terms, quarter-on-quarter (3Q CY 2014 versus 2Q CY 2014), and 43 percent growth year on year. Smart phones segment up 100 percent to 0.2 million units while feature phones up by 33 percent to 0.8 million units year on year.
In the overall Sri Lanka Mobile Handsets market, Nokia retained leadership position with a 22 percent share, followed by Micromax at second position with 19 percent and E-Tel at third position with 12 percent, in terms of sales (unit shipments) during third quarter of 2014.
“The leadership positions are somewhat volatile and we see an ongoing tussle for the top slots every quarter,” Tanvi Sharma, Sri Lanka Telecoms Analyst at CMR was quoted in the media release.
“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.”
In the smartphone market segment, Samsung leades with a 20.6 market share followed by E-Tel with 17.7 percent market share.
Huawei accounts for 14.3 percent in the market.
Sri Lanka feature phone shipments reached 0.8 million units in the quarter. Nokia had a market share of 25.7 percent in the quarter, followed by Micromax (20.1 percent) share.
“Though featurephone shipments have stagnated in the quarter, yet the market is heavily skewed towards them in terms of sheer numbers,” Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst for Telecoms at CMR was quoted.
“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.”
About 6.8 million people in the world use smart devices and about 20 percent of the population use smart devices in Sri Lanka data showed.
