Nokia may be fading around the world, but in India it has a different story to tell especially in feature phone segment.In a recent study by Nielsen on usage of Dual-SIM handsets and multiple-SIM card users in India, it was revealed that 71 million subscribers use Multiple SIM cards across India. In the Dual-SIM handset market Nokia rules with a market share of 30 percent, while Samsung comes in second with a market share of 16 percent.
Earlier the segment was dominated by India players like Micromax, Karboon and Spice, but with the entry of top brands their market share has been cutting short.
Some interesting facts from the study –
- 71 million Unique Subscribers use multi-SIMs in India
- Multiple SIM card users tend to be younger – largely students, newly employed and working professionals
- For most Multi-SIM card users, there hasn’t been a significant increase in their
monthly mobile expense despite maintaining two separate connections - Users prefer to keep both SIM cards as prepaid to have a better control on costs as well as to capitalize on monthly deals offered by operators.
The main reason for buying multi-SIMs handsets by consumers are mostly due to the desire for optimizing tariffs and taking advantage of better and cheaper deals offered by operators.
The study revealed that smaller telecom operators have a relatively higher share among MultiSIM card users. While Uninor has just 1 percent market share among mobile users, it goes up to 6 percent when it comes to MultiSIM user share. Similarly, Aircel’s share too goes up a notch in the Multi-SIM card usage space.
The Nielsen study covers usage statistics of active multi-SIM card users in 18 Indian cities with nearly 20,000 mobile users in the 18-55 age group were covered to arrive at these findings.