Samsung Galaxy Grand @ Rs 21500; co aims to boost mkt share

If you are a Samsung loyalist, you will be interested in its latest smartphone offering in the Galaxy series, the Grand. It has more or less everything the Galaxy note and Galaxy S3 have but, it's cheaper!  With domestic peers launching similar smartphones at lower rates, one needs to wait and watch for what Samsung has to offer at this point in time. CNBC-TV18’s, Kritika Saxena reports.

Samsung’s new Galaxy Grand priced at Rs 21,500, the phone boasts of a 4.1.2 android operating system , 1.2 giga hertz dual core processor with 5 inch screen, 8 mega pixel camera, and HD video recording. The phone has pretty much everything you would get in a note or an S3 but at a cheaper rate. Will the company be worried about the grand eating into the sales of the other phones in the Galaxy series is yet to be seen.

Regarding its future plans in India, Samsung is looking to expand its plant in Chennai and manufacture a larger number of phones from the plant. The mobile maker says it has been launching around 44 phones per year and is confident of retaining that pace as well as its no.1 position in the handset market in India despite threat of competition eating into its market share.

Asim Warsi, VP, Samsung mobile says, "We continue to launch several models that Samsung is known to launch every year and is likely to go on. There are plenty of devices coming out from our side from tablets to premium smart phones to smart phone at large to our feature phones."

Warsi further adds that there is enough space for any brand including Samsung to come and do the right things, so if any brand in Samsung is coming out with great products, great experiences, great retail presence, great marketing inputs, great after sales network they are of enormous focus and importance.

Samsung's smart proposition and pricing the 'Grand' competitively is one of its strategies to retain its #1 rank. The only negative is a lower screen resolution but at a price of Rs21,500 it is still well positioned to beat its domestic peers specially Micromax.

Now, Samsung has a market share of 40 percent in the overall phone segment and 45 percent in the smartphone segment. Samsung is confident of growing this share and industry experts say that it is well positioned to cross a market share of 55-60 percent in India.