Panasonic is striving hard to making a comeback in the business globally, with India as the key sales driver. The company recently launched Eluga arc smartphone in its Eluga series. We got a chance to speak to Pankaj Rana, Business Head of the Mobility Division of Panasonic India. He shared some interesting insights about upcoming smartphone launches, focus on Make in India and more.
Panasonic India doubled its mobile business revenue in the fiscal year ended March 31 to Rs 1,200 crore, from Rs 600 crore in 2014-15. The company aims to double its market share by launching new smartphones, 90% of which will be 4G. Panasonic had around 3% market share with smartphone sales hitting 1.5 lakhs units per month. Rana expects that the company will sell over 2.5 lakh smartphones this fiscal year out of which 2.3 lakh handsets are made in India. Panasonic smartphones are locally assembled by its manufacturing partner Dixon at the Noida facility.
Panasonic India plans to launch seven to eight new smartphones in next few weeks that will support 4G LTE, added Rana. The company expects to more than double its revenue from mobile phones to Rs 2,500 crore by the end of this fiscal year.
Talking about Panasonic’s performance Rana said that the threat from online sales has reduced in recent times and retail channel sales are increasing. He further stated that the company has been experiencing a good period since last 3-4 months. In India, the company has more than 50 exclusive service centers for mobile and over 250 Panasonic brand shops. Rana said the company has a strong distribution channel compared to other smartphone makers. It will keep focusing on the offline model this year as well. Panasonic plans to expand its reach in Indian smartphone market.
Speaking about future plans, Rana stated that Panasonic will keep launching new phones in India and take customer feedback about missing features in their handsets. Furthermore, the company will invest in product planning and has a team of 10-15 people for the same.
Panasonic has an event scheduled tomorrow, May 26, where it will launch a new smartphone which according to Rana is targeted at tier II and tier III cities. The device runs on Android Marshmallow. We will know more about the specifications of the phone tomorrow.
Sneha Bokil contributed to this post