Sony Ericsson, a leading Japanese-Swedish mobile handset maker, is all set to produce its mobile handsets in Sriperumbudur through manufacturing agreements with Flextronics and Foxconn.
Global mobile phone majors Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and others are offering a slew of products including touchscreen and music capable handsets in India to counter the might of Apple's iPhone, which is expected to hit the markets in September.
Nokia, the dominant force in the handset industry, has spent the major part of 2009 guarding its turf against resurgent rivals like Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, and also tech powerhouses like Research in Motion, Apple and HTC.
Phone manufacturers, like car companies, are capitalising on the latest trends and working with cool designers as the market for designer phones is big, and getting bigger. Of the 180 million mobile subscribers, young consumers are estimated to account for around 60 per cent (108 million units). It is this consumer group that the mobile vendors are planning to lure with premium, designer or special edition mobile phones, this season.
While Nokia remains the clear number one, the number two and three positions are seeing the real strategising.
ARM has revealed plans to put chips into more mobile devices that will let chipmakers like STMicroelectronics, FreeScale speed up the development of ARM-based chips for smartphones and PDAs
Fierce competition and a fall in hardware and component prices have resulted in handset prices dropping 10-50 per cent across brands over the last 12 months.
The Appellate Tribunal for Foreign Exchange has upheld the penalties imposed on 10 MNCs, including Ericsson, Nokia and Sony by the Special Director of Enforcement for violating foreign exchange regulations.
Eighteen multi-national companies have been slapped show cause notices for alleged violation of Foreign Exchange Regulations involving over Rs 170 crore.
