Samsung Electronics aims to double its share of the Indian mobile phone market to 15 percent in 2008, when it hopes to sell at least 10 million handsets, a senior official said on Thursday."Globally, we are No. 2. In India, we are not No. 2. We want to go step by step and this is the first step," Asim Warsi, general manager of GSM marketing at the South Korean firm's local unit, said after the launch of a new model.
"Our current market share is about 7 percent. We don't consider this market share yet," he said.
Commanding 14.5 percent of the global mobile market in the July-September quarter, Samsung moved past Motorola to the second spot, behind Nokia, which made more than a third of the 289 million phones sold worldwide in the period, research firm Gartner said.
Samsung will launch eight new models in India in the first quarter of 2008, including two entry-level phones, as part of its strategy to corner a greater share of Asia-Pacific's fastest-growing mobile handset market.
Samsung's focus would not be so much on entry level phones but on models with features such as color screens and FM radio, Warsi said.
"With rising incomes and purchasing power, can't a consumer in rural India not migrate to color phones," Warsi said, adding demand for phones with monochrome screens would shrink in the manner of that for black-and-white television sets.
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