10,000 mobile phones sold in India every hour: IDC

New Delhi, June 20 (PTI) - Every hour as many as 10,000
mobile phones are sold in India, thanks to the ever-increasing
mobile services market and availability of entry level
handsets that has brought phones well within everyone's reach,
an I.D.C. India report said.

India has shipped close to 85 million mobile handsets
between April 2007 and March 2008, compared to under 66
million units shipped in the previous fiscal, registering an
year-on-year growth of around 29 percent.

In the last quarter of the financial year FY 2008,
country's shipment has touched 22.3 million which amounts to
around 10,000 phones every hour, stated I.D.C. which tracks
the Indian telecom industry.

It is up 24.4 percent from 17.9 million units in the
corresponding period of the previous year.

I.D.C. India Country Manager Kapil Dev Singh said: "This
growth comes on the back of a burgeoning mobile services
market and lower entry barriers across various customer
categories, as average selling values (A.S.Vs) of handsets
continue to fall in the wake of a highly competitive landscape
populated by close to 25 vendors."

The year also saw growing number of high-end phones
being shipped to india as EDGE and WCDMA-enabled mobile phones
contributed 15.4 percent and 3.1 percent of the total mobile
phone shipments in FY 2008 compared to 7.4 percent and 1.2
percent respectively, in 2006-07.

In India, overall, Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia
has the largest market share, of 52.8 percent, followed by LG
at 10.2 percent and Samsung at 8.3 percent in terms of units
shipped during the quarter ended March 31, 2008, I.D.C. said.
PTI