Martin Cooper, a former general manager for the systems division at Motorola, is considered the inventor of the first

modern portable handset. Bell Laboratories introduced the idea of cell phone communications in 1947 with the police car technology. History of mobile phone industry in India A report of Cellular Operators Authority of India regarding the entry of cell phones into India is listed below. This shows the improvement in cell phone introduction over the years. 1992 Telecommunication sector in India was liberalized to bridge the gap through government spending and to provide additional resources for the nations telecom target. Private sector was allowed participation. 1993 The telecom industry got an annual foreign investment Rs. 20.6 millions. 1994 License for providing cell phone services was granted by the government of India for the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. Cell phone service became duopoly (i.e. Not more than two cell phone operators could be licensed in each telecom circle) under a fixed license fee regime for 10 years. 1995 19 more telecom circles got mobile licences 1995 - (August) Kolkata became the first metro with a cell phone network. 1997- TRAI was set up. 1998 Annual foreign investment in telecom stood at Rs. 17,756.4 millions. 1999FDI inflow into telecom sector fell by almost 90 per cent to Rs. 2126.7 millions. 1999 Tariff rebalancing exercise got initiated. 1999 (March) - National Telecom Policy was announced. 2000 (June) - FDI inflow dropped further down to Rs. 918 millions. 2000 (Jan) - Amendment of TRAI Act. Source: Cellular Operators Authority of India (COAI)

When mobile phones were introduced in India in the mid-90s, US based Motorola, Sweden's Ericsson and Finland's Nokia dominated the handset market in India. Over the years, the old order has changed today players like Samsung, LG, Apple, Virgin, HTC, Huawei, Haier are all competing for a place in the market. Apart from this there is also a competition from imported unbranded Chinese mobiles which are avaible with lot many features of a typically high end say Nokia mobile but, at a substantially lesser price. After the initial dominance of Nokia from 1990s till 2002, a change occurred in Indian market hen CDMA technology was launched in the year 2003. At this point the Korean brands namely Samsung and LG established themselves after they tied up with CDMA operator Reliance Infocomm. This was a breakthrough in Indias mobile phone industry since, people were able to get mobile phones with Reliance connection only for a initial cost of about Rs. 500/-. This opened up a mass market for mobile manufacturers in India. Gradually all the major players like Nokia, Motorola came up with their CDMA models and have been able to regain their market share.

In the last few years India has witnessed a revolution in mobile phone market with about 10 to 11 million subscribers being added to the customer base each month. The major reasons for this boom have been: 1. Falling tariff rates of telecom service providers . 2. Fall in the prices of mobile handsets. 3. Increase in the reach of service providers covering ever nook and corner of the country. Following are the current highlights of mobile phone industry in India: 1. The penetration of mobile phones stands at about 30%. 2. 81% of mobile users are in urban area. 3.Indias rural teledensity stands at about 12.6% 4. It is forecasted that sales of mobile handsets in rural India will grow at CAGR of around 17% from 2009 to 2012 With a subscriber base of more than 851 million, the Mobile telecommunications system in India is the second largest in the world and it was thrown open to private players in the 1990s. According to the world telecommunications industry, India will have 1.200 billion mobile subscribers by 2013. The first mobile phone was launched in India during 1990s. The first mobile phone company was Nokia. Cell phones subscribers in India: 851.70 million (June 2011). Monthly Cell phone Addition: 11.41 million (June 2011) Market share of mobile phone companies in India Revenues of the Indian mobile handset market grew by 15% to touch Rs 33,171 crore in 2010-11 from Rs 28,897 crore a year back. According to a survey covering all the mobile handset companies doing business in India across categories like feature phones, multimedia phones, enterprise phones and smartphones, the following statistics was achieved. Both multi-national and Indian mobile phone firms were surveyed for this report. Nokia remained the #1 player in handset business in FY2010-11 with revenue of Rs 12,929 crore showing a growth of 0.2% over Rs 12,900 crore it did in FY2009-10. It lost market share in low-end segments to home grown handset makers like Micromax, Karbonn and Spice whereas it's high-end phones faced a tough competition from brands like Samsung, BlackBerry and HTC. Nokia has lost market share due to the lack of dual-SIM phones in its portfolio. Dual-SIM phones have become an increasing phenomenon among value conscious Indian consumers. For FY2010-11, Nokia enjoys a market share of 39.0%. The Finnish firm was followed by Samsung with revenues of Rs 5,720 crore and the company captured market share of 17.2%. The company grew by 21.7% in FY2010-11 from Rs 4,700 crore it did a year before. Samsung's success can be attributed to its rich product portfolio on various popular operating systems like Windows, Android and Bada. The company's entry level smartphone 'Wave' and 'Galaxy S' have been hugely successful during

the period. For FY2010-11, the company's 3G phones contributed 5% of its entire sales, adds Voice&Data, specialty publisher CyberMedia's flagship journal for the telecom industry. Homegrown handset company Micromax captured #3 slot among Top 10 mobile handset brands for FY2010-11. The company grew 43% during the fiscal to register revenue of Rs 2,289 crore from Rs 1,602 crore a year before, and grabbed a market share of 6.9%. The Canadian firm Research in Motion's brand BlackBerry ranked among top 5 mobile phone brands in India. Positioning itself at #4, the Blackberry garnered revenue of Rs 1,950 in FY2010-11, up 61.2% from Rs 1,210 in FY2009-10. Its entry level smartphone saw more sales in the fourth quarter than all other three quarters put together. The company grabbed a market share of 5.9%. Taiwanese handset maker HTC saw a growth of 99%, the highest, among all the brands. HTC's revenue for FY2010-11 grew to Rs 450 crore from Rs 226 crore in FY2009-10 and holds 1.4% market share. Most other Indian brands including Lava, Intex and Zen have shown almost a flat growth. The price conscious Indian consumers could benefit in the current fiscal as domestic handset players like Maxx, Karbonn and Micromax roll out made in India handsets from their own manufacturing plants. As the 3G services extend nationwide, the 3G phones would see a much bigger traction triggering entry of more 3G enabled phones at affordable prices.