Consumers prefer affordable handsets with advanced features: Cyber Media Research

A study conducted by CyberMedia Research (CMR) on the mobile handset usage and purchasing decision reveals that a huge chunk of Indian consumers are moving away from brand consciousness and are more concerned about feature conscious, applications aware and value conscious. They are lapping up mobile phones with advanced features at affordable prices from new and emerging brands. Customers expect features including MP3 players, digital cameras in entry level phones.

There has been a paradigm shift in the mobile handsets market with a strong uptake in shipments of 'value for money', competitively priced models by a large proportion of Indian consumers. Traditionally, India has been a price sensitive market, and CMR's research has reinforced this trend for mobile handsets.

While Nokia remained as the most well recognized brand in terms of 'total awareness' with 99 per cent score and Samsung with 98 per cent. Emerging Indian brands like Micromax and Spice have managed to attract a large following with 86 and 78 per cent respectively. The bouquet of feature phones and smartphones at affordable prices launched by these emerging vendors led to customer satisfaction and delight for the Indian consumers while giving their more established global counterparts a run for their money.

A majority of Blackberry users (66%) felt their handsets provided 'excellent' or 'very good' value for money, followed by Nokia users (58%) and Samsung users (57%). Amongst new, emerging brands G'five users (56%) showed the maximum score on the same attributes. Other new, emerging brands like Micromax (54%) and Spice (54%) closely follow this trend. 'Satisfaction with overall performance' followed a similar pattern.