MUMBAI: According to market intelligence and advisory firm IDC's India Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker, Q2 September 2010 release, shipments of mobile handsets in India grew by 6.3 per cent quarter-on-quarter (Q2 2010 over Q1 2010) to touch an all time high of 38.63 million units in a single quarter.

In a significant new development, the study found that Dual- and Triple-SIM card slot phones have grown to touch as much as 38.5 per cent of the total India Mobile Handset shipments, from less than 1 per cent in Q2 2009 (April-June 2009 quarter).

IDC associate VP-Research Anirban Banerjee said, In the recent quarters several new players successfully launched their own devices at significantly lower Average Selling Values (ASVs) in the price sensitive India market. Such handsets found ready acceptance amongst first time buyers, especially from small towns and villages....

This influx of new brands led to a spurt in overall market and saw �emerging vendors' corner as much as 33.2 per cent of total India mobile handset shipments in Q2 2010. The handset maker Nokia retained its number one spot with a market share of 36.3 per cent in terms of units shipped. The Korean electronics giant Samsung retained the number two position with 8.2 per cent, while Chinese brand G'Five emerged as the number three player with 7.3 per cent.

IDC India lead telecoms analyst Naveen Mishra said, The India mobile market saw a unique trend of multi SIM phones capturing 38.5 per cent of the market. This could be attributed to several new service providers responding with highly competitive tariff plans to a price sensitive mobile telephony user market.

According to IDC's India Quarterly Mobile Handsets Tracker, Q2 September 2010 release, the number of emerging vendors in India's burgeoning mobile handsets market grew to 35 in Q2 2010 and they together garnered 33.2 per cent of total shipments for the first time during the April-June 2010 quarter. This represented a manifold increase from five (5) new vendors representing a 0.9 per cent combined share of units shipped in the January-March 2008 quarter.

During the last 6 months (January-June 2010) the top five mobile handset vendors in India were Nokia, Samsung, G'Five, Micromax and Spice.