Samsung smartphones launched

Harshini PERERA

The overall smartphone market in Sri Lanka is around three to five percent which is growing increasingly.

Samsung will be introducing multi-sim phones in the future and expects to be the market leader in dual sim mobile phones with a market share of around 19 percent, Samsung Country Head K. Shankar Narayan told Daily News Business.

He was speaking at the launch of two smartphones, Samsung Wave and Galaxy S yesterday.

Samsung Country Head K.Shankar Narayan with the newly launched phones. Picture by Sarath Weerasinghe

The Sri Lankan market for mobile phones is around 100,000 to 110,000 per month that are legally brought into the country. The gray market still occupies a bigger percentage of the mobile phone market in the country.

With the Government decision to reduce taxes on imported phones the gray market is expected to go down, he said.

The average selling price of mobile phones is between Rs 8,000 to Rs 10,000 and this is 30 percent of the market. The mid range and high-end market is fluctuating between Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 which is fast growing among Sri Lankans.

Sri Lankans no longer prefer basic mobile phones but they prefer middle level and featured phones, Narayan said.

Samsung has gained a 15 percent growth for the three months period from 5 percent in May till August this year. The company expects to reach 20 percent by the end of December this year.

“We need to go for this target by increasing our outlets to more than 1000 in the country by the end of December. We also need to introduce new segments in touch phones and smart phones segments. We will be introducing new phones for the dual Sim segment that are below Rs 10,000,” Narayan said.

Samsung is already catering to the fast growing market in North and East areas. Company has set up regional distributors in Trincomalee and Jaffna. Currently, a service centre is operated in Trincomalee catering to the needs of the region while Samsung expects to set up service centres in Batticoloa, Ratnapura and Anuradhapura in the future.

“Consumers today relate to their mobiles as communication hubs and as personal gateways to communication. Samsung ‘bada’, our new mobile platform is the key driver to our global smartphone strategy.

It can accommodate various applications created by developers and it provides an interesting space for us to compete with our competitors,” he said.