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Sachin Thapar in Calcutta on Tuesday. Picture by Kishor Roy Chowdhury
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Calcutta, March 12: Sony India is looking at trebling its turnover from smartphones to Rs 3,500 crore in 2013-14. This is likely to push Sony’s market share in the category to about 14 per cent during the year from 9 per cent.
The Indian entity of the Japanese electronics firm has raised its budget for marketing its phones under the Xperia brand to Rs 300 crore.
“In the next fiscal, 3.3 crore units of smartphones are expected to be sold and hence there is a huge potential for growth. In fiscal 2015, it could reach 4.7 crore units. For Sony’s mobile division in India, we have a clear goal — to make 2013 a breakthrough year,” Sachin Thapar, head of sales and marketing (mobile division), Sony India, said after the launch of the Android Xperia Z smartphone here today.
“We are estimating this will make Xperia one of the biggest categories in Sony India’s sales alongside the Bravia television sets. In the next fiscal, if we can achieve a turnover of Rs 3,500 crore, we will be contributing 30 per cent to Sony’s business in India,” Thapar added.
“The smartphone market in Bengal will be 15 lakh units in fiscal 2014. We plan to conduct business worth Rs 170 crore here and Bengal could contribute 5 per cent to the overall Xperia sales,” he said.
“The smartphone category is almost doubling every year in India. We will see the trend for the next three to four years,” he added.
Sony dropped the Ericsson name from its phones last year after buying out the Swedish firm’s share in the joint venture. While the earlier Sony Ericsson was a separate legal entity, procedures are on to merge the phone business with Sony.
“After the departure of Ericsson, the brandcall of Sony phones has increased substantially,” he said.
After exiting the feature phone category in 2012, Sony now has 11 smartphone models starting from Rs 8,500. The company is betting on Xperia Z to drive its fortunes in the smartphone market this year. The smartphone is priced at Rs 38,990. Sony today also said it would bring its Xperia tablet Z to India in May.
The company has set a target to have 8,000 outlets by the next fiscal from 3,000.
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