Nokia steals the show with Lumia, Asha: The Mobile Indian survey

15 of the phones that made it to The Mobile Indian's list of Top 25 mobile handsets have dropped prices by up to Rs 500.

In October 2011, Nokia had unveiled the Asha line up, a series of lower-end mobile phones that run on Series 40 operating system, to show its commitment to emerging markets, especially India. Two months later, it launched the Lumia, a Windows operating system -based smartphone series to increase its upper-end base.

Nokia's dual strategy of luring customers to both low-end and smartphone segments seems to be paying off. This also mirrors in 'The Handset Hotlist' survey in January 2012. Asha 200, 300 and Lumia 800 made it to the list as soon as they hit the Indian market.

The Handset Hotlist is brought out by The Mobile Indian (www.themobileindian.com) every month. It is based on a survey of online preferences of over one million visitors who visited the site in December 2011, and searched for and viewed information about mobiles on the site's Handset section, which lists more than 1,500 models.

Sreekant Khandekar, director, The Mobile Indian, says, "Two mobile phones of Asha series and one from Lumia have made it to the list instantly on launch. This is rare. Normally, phones take a few months to gain popularity."

Khandekar adds, "Another interesting trend seen in the hotlist is that 15 out of the 25 handsets in the list have seen a price reduction varying from Rs 100 to Rs 500 compared to last month."

According to The Handset Hotlist for January 2011, 12 of the 25 most-sought after mobile phones are from Nokia. Samsung follows with eight, Sony Ericsson with four and Micromax has one model.

Nokia C5-03, a Symbian operating system-based handset, was the most searched mobile phone on The Mobile Indian, followed by arch rival Samsung's Galaxy Pro-B7510 and Galaxy SLI9003, which occupied second and third slots, respectively.

Apart from Nokia's Asha 200, 300 and Lumia 800, five other phones made it to this month's Hotlist for the first time. This includes Samsung Galaxy SL I9003, Nokia 603, Samsung C-3330 Champ-2 and the Samsung Hero Music E1232B.

Micromax A70 was the only handset from an Indian handset player to have made it to the Handset Hotlist.

Top 10 Indian Challengers

Lava Mobiles made its entry into the Top 10 Indian Challengers list for the first time in January. Micromax, which had bagged six slots in last month's report, was able to garner only five this month.

The Challengers List was introduced in August 2011 and ranks the 10 most exciting handsets from Indian marketers, based on the preferences of visitors in the handset guide section of The Mobile Indian.

Commenting on the Challengers list, Khandekar says, "We saw Micromax reducing the price of its A-85, which is the only high-end smartphone in its portfolio, by around Rs 4,000."

This month, six new phones made it to the Challenger List, including Micromax Superphone A75, Spice Mobiles M 5455-Flo, Beetel GD470, Lava Mobiles M70, Spice Mobiles Mi 350n and Karbonn-K-1616.