Lava becomes a fast growing mobile handset manufacturer with an overall market share of 8 percent, claims IDC estimates. The vendor has become the leading feature phone maker in the third quarter ending September 2014. When it comes to the overall category, merging feature phones and smartphones, Lava is the second largest manufacturer. These details have been gathered by the imports volume tracked by a leading independent market research firm Cybex Exim Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
As per the report, Lava has imported a total of 5.3 million feature phones in the aforementioned quarter, thereby taking it to the number 1 position as compared to other India based handset manufactures such as Karbonn with 4.6 million and Micromax with 5 million shipments respectively. The data reveals that in the second quarter, Lava International Limited (Lava and Xolo jointly) imported around 7.27 million handsets that is 13 precent higher than third largest player.
Lava aims to grab a stronger grip in the Indian mobile phone market and is planning to invest approximately Rs 500 crore in phases to set up its own manufacturing unit in the country in the next couple of years. For now, R&D and product engineering are carried out in Bangalore (India) and Shenzen (China). The upcoming plant will be capable of manufacturing approximately 5 million units a month. Also, Lava has partnered with Google to announce Android One devices that are developed in house in Q1 2015.
Commenting on this, Mr. Amit Gupta, Cybex Exim said, “To understand the market dynamics we track the import shipments of various players on a daily basis. Domestic players have shown remarkable growth over the last two quarters, majorly credited to success of Indian brands like Micromax, LAVA & Karbonn. With local vendors reducing the price gap between entry level smartphone and feature phones, usage for mid-price phones is expected to increase at a high rate. At the same time recent launch of Android One devices is expected to drive more volumes in the price sensitive market with many other local players geared up to introduce their devices in the coming quarter.”
