Cracking Diwali for smartphone brands as sales see 75 percent surge

The Diwali season this year has been a highly profitable one for smartphone makers, according to a report by the Economic Times. The report states that while sales of Sony have gone up by five or six times, other players like Samsung have been able to sell twice the number of handsets as the year before.

The five day festive period, starting from Dhanteras on Friday and ending with Bhai Dhooj on Tuesday, resulted in a big increase in terms of sales. Multi-brand retailers and handset makers, according to the source, have said that their marketing expenditure paid off handsomely and turned what was expected to be a lacklustre festive season into a highly profitable one.

Himanshu Chakravarti, Chief Executive of the Mobile Store, told the paper, “Sales on a day before Diwali, at one of our key stores in Gurgaon, equalled that of a small state’s monthly revenue. Countrywide, sales have been higher by 70-75% this year compared to last year’s."  iPhone 5s led the sales chart, although there was no official word from Apple about this. This was followed by mid-range and high-end offerings from Samsung and Sony. The boom in the smartphone category this year is in complete contrast to an increasing number of reports claiming that the high-end smartphone category may be reaching saturation in terms of revenue.

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This year’s festive season has turned out to be highly lucrative for smartphone manufacturers

Sunil Nayyar, Sony India’s Head of sales, said that the increase in the sales of mobile phones outpaced that of other consumer goods like flat screen televisions. The sales of the latter, according to the executive, “grew by only 10 to 15 percent over the last year industry-wide, compared to the 30 percent growth seen in last year’s festive season.”  Surprisingly enough, the sales figures of local players like Micromax were not mentioned in the report, which only focussed on international brands.

Sony, which has steadily been adding to its Xperia line-up of smartphones in India, said that its marketing strategy worked as sales of its devices increased by five or six times over the festive period, compared to last year. Sony also said that smartphones between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 were most popular, especially when clubbed in with the various EMI schemes, Sony’s damage protection insurance and the Diwali offer of a free set of headphones with every purchase.

Adding to this, Nokia India’s Director of Sales, Raghuvesh Sarup, said, “The buyback plan on our Lumia smartphones surpassed our expectations, with the Nokia Lumia 925, Lumia 625 and Lumia 520 leading the way."  The Nokia executive also said that there was a lot of interest being expressed for smartphones with bigger displays, like the Lumia 625. He also said that the sales of the red, yellow and green Lumia and Asha devices were higher than other colours.

The current smartphone market leader, Samsung, also recorded an increase in sales. According to Vineet Taneja, Country Head of Mobile and Information technology at Samsung India, “We have witnessed robust growth across the categories. The mobile phone sale during Dhanteras was very good this year; it was almost double versus normal days.”

BlackBerry was also able to report peak sales this festive season for devices like the BlackBerry 9720 and the BlackBerry Q5, while there was a huge traction seen for the Z10, which recently saw its price slashed by 30 percent to now stand at Rs 29,000 for this season. While talking about this, Varghese Thomas, Head of Communications for BlackBerry India said, “Smartphones have fast become a category of necessity which has tended to drive sales during the festive season.”

So despite the increase in prices of high-end devices across platforms and manufacturers, it looks like the market has not lost its appetite for smartphones.