Can Panasonic realise its big dreams for India's smartphone market?

New Delhi: Even as Panasonic, the Japanese electronics company, entered India’s smartphone market with its P51 device,  Manish Sharma, the company’s managing director said that the company considers India as ’the’ global market for smartphones.

“Launches for most brands is after considering the global environment and customers and optimising their products for global requirements. Panasonic considers India a big enough market and using our technology from Japan and manufacturing capabilities in China, we will be able to offer the best product,” said Sharma.

“India is the global market for us and it will be the only market we will focus on as it has immense opportunities. Hence, we have built a product using global technology for the Indian consumer.”

Defending the belated entry of Panasonic into India’s smartphone market however, Sharma said that anytime a company has the right product, is the right time to launch.

“We do not think it’s too late to enter India’s smartphone market as yet. Penetration is very very low. Customers are evolving and technology is evolving and for the next 3-5 years the smartphones market will evolve, so we are here at the right time,” he said. Earlier during the launch, Sharma said that the company was aiming for a market share of 8 percent in the first year. He later told Firstpost that the company’s strategy to get there was threefold:

One, to build a portfolio that has the best product, with the best value for money in each segment of smartphones. Keeping in line with this, the company will roll out eight smartphones in the next three months that will be priced between Rs. 6,990 and Rs. 35,000. “To begin with, our idea is to have ‘hero’ products in each segment – the best product in that segment – which will also provide value for money. Going forward we will expand the line up but at least for the next six months we will keep rolling the portfolio at about 8-9 models,” Sharma told Firstpost.

Two, the company has partnered with Jaina Marketing – which presently works with 90,000 retailer outlets – for distribution, marketing and customer service. Panasonic hopes to use Jaina’s extensive network to make available its phones across approximately 20,000 retail outlets in three months. “We want to penetrate deep into the mobile phone market – both urban and rural and we hope to be able to do this using Jaina’s network,” Sharma said. Jaina Marketing is one of India’s largest distributors for mobile phones and its managing director is also the managing director for India’s local mobile phones manufacturer, Karbonn Mobiles.

Sharma said that Jaina’s capability to distribute products and their passion for the market is what made Panasonic choose it as their distributor. “We want to reach 20,000 retail outlets in three months and they are very capable of doing that,” Sharma said.

The company wants to also focus on solid customer service with its 1250 service centers of its own and Jaina’s 650 to take it to 1900 pan India.

Three, Sharma said that finance options for customers – to enable better accessibility of Panasonic phones to all customers – was also part of the plan for promoting and gaining market share. “We will consider the EMI options with zero percent interest for our phones. We want all customers to be able to buy our products,” he said.

He said the company is looking at $1 billion till the financial year 2015 coming out of smartphones alone and it is a milestone the company is positive about reaching. “We will spend 100 crores on advertising alone in the next year,” he said.

“We are looking at eating away 2-3% of someone else’s pie and we want to be part of 4-5% on the growth of the Indian smartphone market,” Sharma said.

Will Panasonic be able to achieve its goals? Now, lets see: Penetration, is something brands like Micromax and Karbonn have already done. Finance options have also been done by players no less than Samsung and Apple. What is left to be seen is whether Panasonic will be able to indeed come up with better than the best phones in each segment or what they call ‘hero’ phones. Only then will that goal of capturing 8 percent of the market share come to fruition.