Mobile Accessories Market in India 2013

The new report, 'Mobile Accessories Market in India', states that India holds immense opportunities for mobile accessory products due to enormous number of mobile device users and rapid growth in adoption of smartphones and tablets. Continual decline of prices of mobile devices is primarily aiding the growth in smartphone and tablet market penetration. Mobile accessories complement the mobile devices or enhance their usage and features. With the elevating popularity of smartphones and other mobile devices, there is significant demand for mobile accessories from consumers across India.

Rise in disposable income has revolutionized consumers' buying and spending trend, especially in the urban areas. Mobile device adoption amongst youth population in the country and their spending pattern provide strong stimulus for growth in adoption. Online retailing plays a big part in this growth as well. It offers the convenience of cash-on-delivery payment option and lower price offers for various products as compared to physical stores.

Mobile accessory companies are provided with flexibility of choosing the best suited sales and distribution channel, thanks to abundant national distributors and plenty of regional and micro distributors, and wholesalers across India. Companies can focus on specific states or cities, or market their products to retail stores across the country.

Smartphone and tablet adoption in rural areas is still low largely due to budgetary constraint and low adaptability to complicated devices. Approximately 70% of India's population resides in rural areas and majority of the wireless consumers there either use basic mobile phones. Consumers in these parts do not indulge in mobile accessories purchase much. In such situation, mobile accessory companies are largely dependent on the urban and suburban consumption.

Both domestic and foreign mobile accessory companies face tough competition from unbranded products, especially ones imported from China. Due to large number mobile accessory manufacturers in China, huge amount of Chinese products are easily available in the grey markets and local stores. A significant number of consumers find these easily available accessories affordable and attractive.

The Government of India, however, has announced incentives and has number of proposals to boost domestic manufacturing of IT and telecom equipments including mobile accessories. In 2012, the Union Cabinet approved INR 100 bn as financial support for the development of electronic manufacturing clusters while recently, additional INR 100 bn was approved to promote large scale manufacturing in India. This presents the best time for mobile accessory companies to establish manufacturing units in India.

Although unbranded grey market products are dominating at present, with competitive pricing and availability, majority of the market can potentially belong to branded mobile accessories.