No more fireworks: Festivals fail to light up mobile phone sellers

New Delhi: Mobile phone sellers said they haven't yet caught sight of the festive season cheer among shoppers, with sales of devices this month being about a quarter less than August last year.Although the sales of smartphones have been steadily increasing month-on-month since May, the gap with pre-Covid numbers has widened in the crucial high selling second half of the year, analysts said.According to smartphone trackers, sales this month have been close to 12 million as against 15.5 million last year. If this trend holds, then 2020 estimates would have to be lowered further from the already scaled down forecast of 130-134 million units. Festive season typically accounts for around a third of annual smartphone sales.“The festive season has kicked off in certain parts of the country with Ganesh Chaturthi, Onam and Independence Day sales, however the sell-in and final consumer demand might not be of similar levels as last year for the third quarter but there will be a recovery in H2’20 with the Diwali season in the latter half,” said Upasana Joshi, an associate research manager at IDC India. “That said, price drops, discounts exchange offers, and a slew of launches close to Diwali may provide a fillip to smartphone sales.”Another analyst, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “How the sales will fare out this season is anybody’s guess, but, to my mind, the consumer sentiment should have improved by now given that it's been three months that the economy started opening up.”Multibrands long-format retailers such as Vijay Sales, Poorvika, GoMobile and BigC said shopping behaviour had vastly changed as consumers were cautious of discretionary spending and looking for an affordable option to suit work-from-home or learn-from-home needs. “We are witnessing an improvement in sales, but I feel 90% of the consumers who are buying smartphones are doing it on need-basis … Hardly 10% are looking to replace their device because there is an exciting launch in the market,” Vijay Sales founder Nilesh Gupta said.A person close to Delhi-based GoMobile said sales in August were down ₹10 lakh by value overall across its 50 stores, which can be quantified as 10%. BigC chairman Balu Chowdhary said sales were down 20% across its 390 stores in South India.Poorvika founder and CEO Uvaraj Natarajan, who operates 390 stores in 60 cities in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Kerala, said sales had seen a strong recovery in South India. “We are stock out in 10 days as compared to 20 days earlier … So, demand in South India, at least, is quite high except for malls where we have recovered only to 25% of normal sales,” he said.77842545Standalone mom-and-pop stores, however, cry foul as they say the reason for poor sales in the offline channel despite healthy demand was smartphone brands who were trying to divert sales to their ecommerce partners.

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