[Guest Article by Sahil, Founder & CEO at PhoneCurry.com – a web service that helps Indian consumers decide which phone to buy.]
At PhoneCurry, because of the way the site is structured, we are able to collect a lot of interesting data on the priorities of the Indian consumers when they are looking to choose which phone to buy. What features are being searched for, what brands are getting the most interest, which phones are being compared against one another when making a decision, and so on.
Such data, we believe, can be useful to many organizations. Phone manufacturers, for instance, can use this data as a feedback loop to their marketing teams (which features to advertise) as well as R&D teams (what kind of phones to make more of).
So we decided to share some of the data we collected for the month of May, 2011 with the readers of PI.
Comments/observations are welcome!!
Overall Interest across Brands
One of the most basic trends that we follow is the overall interest across brands. Here the big brands with a pan market presence (in terms phones for all price ranges) obviously dominate the popularity ratings. The graph below depicts the interest across Brands.
Y-Axis: Number of organic page views of individual phone pages (adjusted to remove page views directed through in-site advertisements) – Showing top 7 brands
Observations
1. Although, it is yet to beat Nokia in terms of market share in India, in terms of interest amongst the population that is researching phones on the internet, Samsung has already crossed Nokia to become the number one brand on the website.
2. Two Indian brands Micromax and Spice, also make it to the top brands list. Most of their interest, as expected, comes from the ‘under Rs. 5,000’ phone market.
Overall Interest across Indian Brands
Among the brands, analysing the Indian ones separately also gives some interesting insights. Many of them have been doing aggressive advertising on TV in recent times. The graph below depicts the interest across Indian Brands.
Y-Axis: Number of page views of individual phone pages – Showing top 7 brands
bservations
1. Videocon makes it to number 3 inspite of a relatively less aggressive advertisement strategy. Probably reflects that people are showing trust in the overall brand which has been a good performer in other segments.
2. Karbonn and Maxx fall behind, even after spending as much as the likes of Micromax and Spice in recent times in terms of advertisements. This probably has to do with the fact that the market feedback on their products and service quality in the market hasn’t been too good. Shows that you have to back up good marketing with good products, for it too really work. Good products can generally work by themselves (case in point being HTC, among the international brands), but good marketing alone doesn’t work in the long term.
Most Popular Smartphones
Smartphones continue to be a fast growing segment, and with Android phones now present in even the ‘under Rs 10,000’ price bracket. And with all the media attention being given to the smartphone segment and apps, this growth will only accelerate. The graph below depicts the most popular smartphones on the website.
Y-Axis: Number of page views of individual phone – Showing top 5 smartphones
Observations
1. It’s all Samsung. Clearly, they are cracking the smartphone game better than anyone else.
2. 3 of the phones (Galaxy Series) are Android, which is to be expected. But the remaining 2 (Wave series), a little surprisingly, are Bada OS. Probably a direct result of a comprehensive media campaign for the Wave series.
3. All these phones are in the ‘Rs. 6,000 to Rs. 15,000’ price bracket.
Most Popular Features
When users search for phones, they set some search filters to help them choose the phone that fits their requirements. The below graph, depicts the interest across these features.
Y-Axis: Number of searches with a particular feature selected – Showing top 9 features
Observations
1. The most popular use for a phone, other than calling, is still as a music player. MP3 player was the most selected feature amongst the search filters.
2. Internet (GPRS/EDGE) make it to a close number 2, indicating growing user interest in using data on their phone.
3. Touchscreen phone are much more popular than full QWERTY ones.
4. ‘Dual sim’ also makes it to the top list, and this is actually one area where the Indian brands are doing very well.
Most Popular Online Retailers
The graph below depicts the interest across the top online retailers.
Y-Axis: Number of clicks on ‘Buy Now’ links on phone pages – Showing top 4 retailers
Observations
1. Since all the online retailers that we fetch prices from, and that are currently selling the phone, are listed on a phone page (in ascending order of price), normally just the one offering the lowest price gets clicked on. In effect, these ratings basically indicate that Flipkart in general is offering the best prices for the most popular phones.
Did you find this data useful? For more detailed data/insights, please feel free to contacts us!
Also see: The Ultimate Smartphone Shootout – Symbian vs Android vs Windows Mobile vs BlackBerry vs iPhone
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