Samsung reportedly claims to have an 'edge' over Apple in India

Samsung said that the company has attained a 50 percent share in the Indian premium phone market, at a time when Apple reportedly battles a slow start to the sale of its new iPhone 6S smartphones in India. According to a report by Economic Times, Manu Sharma, Director of Product Marketing for Samsung India, said that the company has seen a ‘positive momentum’ over the last one year on the back of new launches such as the S6 edge and the Note5 devices. He stated, “As per numbers provided by market research firm GfK, our market share in the Rs 30,000 and above category is 51 percent in value terms at the end of the September this year. This was about 36% till about a year ago.” He went on to state that the company witnessed a ‘positive traction’ in the phone market in October. This could be due to the festive season in India. Sharma said, “The festival season has shaped up well. We have seen a spurt in volumes.” However, it should be pointed out that there is no independent way to confirm the GfK findings. Many research firms in the market offer different market share figures. Recently, a report stated that Samsung, one of the largest smartphone manufacturing brand among many other things is predicted to be ‘going downhill’ and might also be out of the smartphone business in the next five years. One of the factors responsible for this tear-down could be the fact that new Android players are offering affordable devices at par with Samsung. In addition, no amount of innovation in their devices can help as the Android crowd thinks that the smartphone is ‘already good enough’.