Competition Issues in India’s Mobile Handset Industry

Mobile phones have been the key to India’s technology revolution. India is the second largest mobile phone market globally, next only to China. At the end of 2018, the estimated number of smart phone users in India was 337 million, compared to 2.53 billion users worldwide. One would imagine that the exponential increase in cheaper smart phone models would displace the market for feature phones; to the contrary, feature phones continue to dominate the Indian market. While smart phone and feature phone shipments in 2018Q3 were about the same, a comparison of
growth rates shows that both phablets (large screen smartphones) and regular smartphones eclipse feature phones.