“Indian devices market has a huge potential. Smartphone sales every year is continuously growing and this is the market which will take overall Digital India initiative to the next level,” said Pankaj Rana, Business Head – Mobility Division, Panasonic India in an interaction with ET Telecom.
Rana further told that the company’s handset business is seeing 60% sales coming from the online channel while 40% of the sales is coming from offline. In 2017, Panasonic had 20% of its sales coming from the online channel which it was expecting to reach 30% by the end of 2017. Currently the company is selling 6 of its smartphones online which are also being sold offline.
Panasonic at present is doing SKD assembly of phones in India in at its Greater Noida facility and has plans of moving to CKD as the transition goes through in a phased manner.
Furthermore, the company is of the view that the Indian government is helping everyone to bring the component ecosystem in India and is going to give great export benefits to handset manufacturers. Panasonic is also working inline with the government’s local manufacturing plan.
According to Rana, consumers these days are focussing on high-speed processors, good camera and extended battery life. He further said that the emerging app ecosystem is playing a crucial role in adoption of smartphones and Panasonic is laying focus on that.
On being asked about the emergence of 4G feature phones, Rana said, “4G feature phones will help to consume data. They will help to connect rural India and customers from tier 3 and tier 4 towns.”
