Two and a half years ago, an experiment by some small Indian mobile phone brands in India forced multinationals such as
Nokia and
Samsung back to the drawing board to take a second look at their product portfolios. At the time, almost no one anticipated that multi-SIM phones would become the rage, and would soon account for more than half the mobile handsets sold in the country every month.
SIM is short for "subscriber identification module" and refers to the digital cards inserted in mobile phones or other phone devices to identify a customer on a phone network. Until some time ago, phones typically came with one SIM card.
A survey by marketing research firm Nielsen shows 71 million phone subscribers in India use multi-SIM handsets out of a total 647 million mobile phone users in the country. And the so-called replacement market for these phones will only expand. According to the report authored by Farshad Family, Managing Director - Media, Nielsen India: "Among 14 per cent of multi-SIM card users who plan to buy a new handset, 75 per cent intend to choose a dual SIM card handset."
Some 45 per cent of multi-SIM card phones are bought by customers in the 18 to 25 year age bracket, the Nielsen survey shows, and 36 per cent fall in the 26-35 years segment.
A clutch of Indian companies such as
Micromax, Lava, and Karbonn, among others, burst onto the domestic mobile phone scene late in 2009 and initially used the dual SIM capability of their instruments as a differentiator. But that was also the time that Indian customers wanted phones with more than one SIM card to take advantage of the competing rates offered by multiple operators. Some customers retained a number just because it had been with them for many years. A second SIM card would allow them to make cheaper calls, taking advantage of new tariff plans in the market.
Today, about a year after Nokia launched its dual-SIM phones, followed by Samsung this February, the two have not just caught up with the smaller brands but also overtaken them. Nokia sells the most dual-SIM handsets in India and Samsung is second, according to CyberMedia Research, a research firm tracking handset shipments.
Among the phone operators, Bharti Airtel accounts for 21 per cent of the multi-SIM market, followed by Reliance and Vodafone which have 17 per cent each, according to the Nielsen report.
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