Taiwan-headquartered TPV, which has the rights to market and sell Philips audio products and television, is eyeing a 26% share of the growing audio market in India pegged at about $1 billion on the back of new ‘made for India’ product launches.
“We have been selling Philips audio products for a little more than a year. The brand has always been among the top brands in the segment. We have presence across 30,000-35,000 outlets for audio... We have market share of about 20-21% in the segment,” Arun Menon, country business head, Philips Television and Audio, TPV Technology said.
He added that the audio segment, including earphones, headphones, bluetooth speakers and home audio, was dominated by unbranded players, interest in expanding market share has gone up among organised players too..
“Just three years back, audio was dominated by home audio... not much was happening in the category. It was almost stagnant. But that has changed now. All brands are now looking at how to expand and capture share in the audio segment.”
He noted that earphones and headphones, which accounted for 20-25% a couple of years ago, today contributed about $500 million to the industry. One reason for the growth, he said, was “e-commerce channels pushing this category. This has also rubbed off on offline sales.”Further, headphones and earphones as a category has grown as most Chinese handset makers not bundling these with the mobile phone has also spurred sales here.
“We have a ₹299 earphone; we sell about 100,000 units monthly. While some player don’t give earphones, some give those which are not great in quality.”
Mr. Menon added that next year the company expects its audio business in India to see a 50% growth driven by new product launches which will be made for India. The company, which has a research and development centre in India, on Friday launched a new range of soundbars that can be connected with television sets and gaming consoles.
On the slowdown in consumer demand, Mr. Menon said the company had seen a bit of slowness in demand in the early part of the year but there has been a pick-up during the festive season. “The festive season has started on a good note, sales have picked up...festive period accounts for about 35-38% of the annual sale,” he said.
