After Eluga U launch, Panasonic says India is its global mobile headquarters

Japanese tech giant Panasonic says it plans to introduce as many as 15 new devices in the next few months as it aims to garner a 5 percent market share in the multi-billion dollar India smartphone market.   Panasonic, which entered the smartphone market here last year, has also declared India as the headquarters for its handset business. “India is a very important market and that is the reason why it is also the headquarters for the phone business for us. There is a huge opportunity here for companies like us, who want to offer quality products at right prices,” Panasonic India Managing Director Manish Sharma told PTI.   He added that the company is looking at aggressively expanding its portfolio in the country to take its market share to 5 per cent in the next one year. The company claims to have about 3 percent share currently, though that’s likely to be an optimistic number given the proliferation of devices in all corners of the country.  “We will launch 15 smartphones and eight feature phones this year. We will launch feature phones because we believe there is still an audience for that, but the focus definitely is on smartphones,” he said.   Over the past few months, the smartphone market has seen fierce competition, fuelled further by new entries like Gionee, Oppo and Xiaomi from China. In 2013, smartphone sales in the country grew almost three-fold to over 44 million, as per research firm IDC. In Q1 of 2014 alone, 17.59 million smartphones were shipped in India with sales being driven by affordable devices.   While Samsung is the category leader with a 35 per cent market share in Q1, local firms like Micromax (15 per cent), Karbonn (10 per cent) and LAVA (six per cent) also held significant share of the market. Nokia had 4 per cent share.   “We will have devices across price points. However, for us the sweet spot would be between Rs 16,500 to Rs 20,000,” Sharma said. Asked if the company was looking at setting up a manufacturing unit in India, he said the company would look at one after it has “certain economies of scale”.   “In two years, we will be in a position to take a firm call,” he said.   Panasonic launched the Eluga U in India, **which is a decently-spec'd phone** , but may lack fire power to take on competition, which has immensely increased in the past few months and is set to be become even fiercer as we move towards the end of the year. **See our hands-on review of the Eluga U** .   With inputs from PTI