Samsung, the Korean electronic goods behemoth, which has tasted singular success with its range of smart phones in India, has lined up aggressive plans in the local mobile phone market. Ranjit Yadav, country head, mobile and IT, Samsung, spoke to DNA on the company’s plans and how it aims to double its sales in India. Excerpts from the interview:There was a time when you would launch every new phone in India. However, Samsung Nexus, which is out in the US, is yet to be launched in India. Is there a change in your marketing strategy?Well, India continues to remain one of our priority destinations. Given the market and the range available in India, including the Galaxy Note and other Galaxy premium devices, we already have a strong presence here and there are enough devices in the market. We will launch Nexus here soon. But when and how is not something we can comment about.

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How many of your new launches will cater to the mid-market segment?A In the past, whenever we have launched new products, they catered to all ranges, including the mid-market segment. Going forward, I see no change in this strategy. There will be products for the masses, as well as the premium category. But I feel prices of all products are definitely going to come down.

Do you think price is a very important factor for Indian customers?Personally, I think the whole price-point issue is very overrated. The price of a phone is no longer a top priority for Indian customers as they look for new features and benefits the phone has to offer. It would be wrong to say that price is the only consideration for customers.

How many phones do you expect to launch this year?Samsung typically launches around 35-40 new models every year, and this year also we will continue to bring new and innovative devices to our consumers.

You have become number one in smart phones and of late, you have been launching quite a few phones in this segment. Is this your new area of focus?As we are the number one player in the smartphone category, every launch of ours in this segment gets discussed a lot more than our other launches. Hence, there is a general feeling that as a company we are more focused on smart phones. However, this is not true. We have launched Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Tab 620, etc, which are equally popular in the market.

Samsung has just one Windows-based phone. Going forward, can we expect more phones on the Windows platform, or will the company continue to build models on Bada?At Samsung, we believe in offering our consumers the widest choices possible and we are the only platform-agnostic player with devices across platforms. Our Galaxy series is powered by Android, we utilise Windows for our Omnia series and Bada for the Wave series. Our focus is to provide our consumers the best possible experience through a range of smart phones.