Nokia C5-03 at No. 1, Samsung Galaxy Ace-S5830 fluctuating: TMI survey

Samsung Galaxy Ace-S5830 has reduced its price by Rs 1,650 since October.

The device market is India is quite volatile in terms of its recall value among consumers and the last 11 Handset Hotlist surveys have shown that most handsets that made it to the Top 25 list failed to retain their positions in the subsequent surveys.

Nokia C5-03 and Samsung Galaxy Ace-S5830 had defied this trend since October, 2011. The C5-03 maintained its No. 1 position, while Galaxy Ace-S5830 was able to bag the No. 4 position in October, November and December. Meanwhile, during January, the Samsung handset occupied the tenth position and in this month's survey, it captured the 13th position.

Sreekant Khandekar, director, The Mobile Indian, says, "Nokia C5-03 has not seen any drop in it price since the last five months, while on the other hand Samsung Galaxy Ace-S5830 has reduced its price by Rs 1,650 since October."

Apart from C5-03 and Galaxy Ace-S5830, three more phones have featured in the last five consecutive Hotlist surveys including this one. These are Samsung-Galaxy-Ace-S5830, Nokia-C6 and Nokia C2-06.

In The Handset Hotlist survey (March 2012), seven of the 11 Nokia phones that made it to the list are low cost phones. In the last few months, Nokia, on one side, has pitched for its Windows Phone operating system-based smartphones and on the other side, has targeted the masses with affordable phones.

Khandekar adds, "Nokia is hitting the right notes with its low cost handsets. Especially with the launch of the Asha series of handsets, Nokia has indicated quite clearly that it will focus on the masses for the time being."

The Handset Hotlist is brought out by The Mobile Indian (www.themobileindian.com) every month. It is based on a study of online preferences of about one million visitors who visited the website in February 2012 and searched for and viewed information about mobiles on the site's Handset section, which lists more than 2,000 models.

According to The Handset Hotlist for March 2012, 11 of the 25 most sought-after mobile handset models are from Nokia. Samsung follows with ten and Sony Ericsson has four.

Khandekar says, "Interestingly, 13 out of the 25 handsets in the list have good cameras, with 10 of them housing 5 megapixel cameras, while the remaining have more powerful ones. Also, 50 per cent of the low cost handsets from Nokia that made it to the list have seen a price correction varying from Rs 150 to Rs 700."

Nokia C5-03, a Symbian handset, was the most searched mobile phone on The Mobile Indian, followed by Stable Mate C6. Samsung Galaxy SL I9003, Nokia Asha 200, Samsung Wave Y S5380, Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Y S5360, Nokia 603, Samsung Champ Deluxe Duos C3312 and Samsung Star 3 Duos were the other phones among the top 10 in the Handset Hotlist.