Mobiles in Emerging Markets

Posted on | April 29, 2005 |

Nice article on Knowledge@Wharton written by Ron Garriques, EVP of Motorola’s personal communications sector. He says markets in the developing world, especially China and India are emerging as the battleground for mobile-device makers. The part from the article that struck me was:

Affordability is less important in India, where consumers like more expensive clamshell phones, Garriques said. Motorola’s market research has indicated that Indians don’t want to be stigmatized as buyers of only the candy-bar phone. “People think about the Indian market as a lower tier. About 30% of the U.S. market is high end, and maybe it’s only 5% in India. But India has 1.1 billion people” compared with 290 million in the U.S. In gross numbers, that means India’s premium market is about half the size of the United States’.

He also gives some numbers - like the total global market size of the mobile industry is about $100 billion producing approximately 700 million mobiles annually.

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