By Muhammad Yasir
KARACHI: Smartphone handsets sales have been increasing in the local markets with emerging technology trends and different user-friendly applications, industry stakeholders said.
Local market for smartphone is very secure and thriving – though not in substantial numbers but it’s significant keeping in view the economy situation and purchasing power of the local customers.
Industry people said that a new handset easily attracts more than 20,000 buyers in the country within a short period of time—but sales of few handsets crossed the limit on high demand.
There are more than 1 million handsets being sold in different markets throughout the country in one month, while smartphones have gained a market share of 4 percent in overall handset industry in Pakistan, revealed Zeeshan Qureshi, Head of Mobiles and Corporate, Samsung Electronics Pakistan and Afghanistan.
“Samsung has been aggressively capturing local market with fairly large share through introduction of advanced and latest smartphones in collaboration with cellular operators in Pakistan,” he added.
Qureshi said these Samsung-powered smartphones have received amazing and overwhelming response locally, which depicts the solid market potential in Pakistan for high-end and expensive brands of smartphones.
According to him, handsets priced between Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 enjoy 70 percent market share, while those priced between Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 have 20 percent market share. Rest of the market is for high-end phones or smartphones that are priced between Rs 12,000 to Rs. 25,000 and beyond.
Collaboration between handset makers and operators enhance the scale of technology utility among the customers of different segments with targeted marketing and advertisement campaigns. The combination fulfills the demand of users with offers, such as, data bundle and call packages and provide opportunity for both partners to earn their revenues with joint brand strategy.
“The high-end handset market in Pakistan is tremendous, which shows its potential with the arrival of new gadgets every next month with different style and features,” said Haseeb Ihteesham, Head of Marketing Nokia Pakistan and Afghanistan.
He said the handsets are now a solution having different software platform, themes and applications – mostly designed to attract niche market having different segments.
The handsets are developed differently for businessmen and for techie-savvy youth, therefore, there is diversity in the market as far as targeted customers are concerned but they are good in numbers, which is ever increasing.
Nokia has vibrant, promising and growing market of its smartphone in Pakistan, meeting requirement of its customers with different platforms, applications and data capacity in most suitable modes.
Nokia launches around 25 to 30 sets in a year and 10 out of them could be categorised as smartphones depending on the prices starting from Rs 15,000 to Rs 50,000. However, different handsets having cost below Rs 10,000 provide features of smartphone.
Officials of the famous handset brands foresee tremendous increase in sales of smartphones with the introduction of 3G technology by cellular operators in the country. Daily Times report