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A recent ABI Research (News - Alert) study revealed that India's mobile handset market experienced a 14.1 percent growth rate to hit a volume of 182 million handsets in 2011. Titled “Indian Mobile Device Market,” this new ABI report says that the momentum will continue through 2017, thanks to Indian consumers’ growing obsession with smartphones from both global and local brands.

The Indian handset market is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.7 percent during the period of 2011-2017, with total handset volume expected to reach 335 million units by 2017.

When it comes to handset vendors, Nokia leads the market with an impressive 37.2 percent market share. Samsung (News - Alert) dominates14.9 percent, G’Five 7.5 percent and Micromax 5.8 percent market share.

Some local as well as Chinese brands are giving the global brands a run for their money. These brands including Micromax, G’Five, Karbonn, Spice, Maxx and Lava, have established a strong presence in the Indian market with their feature-rich, but low-priced handsets.

The heavy weight vendors like Nokia (News - Alert) and Samsung are revising their price strategy in response to the growing threat from their local and Chinese rivals, the ABI report pointed out in a press release.

Huawei and ZTE (News - Alert) are among the two major Chinese players who are slowly cementing their place in the Indian handset market with their white label handsets. These companies are yet to make their mark under their own brand names.

With a CAGR of 40 percent, the smartphone segment is predicted to be the fastest-growing segment and will continue to outpace the overall handset market for the foreseeable future. According to the research, the smartphone market will reach 97.2 million units by 2017, accounting for 29 percent of the total handset volume.

Sensing the huge potentials of this highly lucrative smartphone market, nearly every major handset vendor has entered the smartphone segment. The domestic players, who tested success in the feature phone segment, are now planning to enter the lucrative smartphone segment, making the things harder for the multi-national vendors.

“Competition is going to intensify as more and more domestic vendors hit the market with their range of smartphones; consequently the average selling price (ASP) for smartphones is going to decline in coming years. The growth in the smartphone segment will be largely driven by the penetration of 3G in India and further catalyzed by falling ASPs,” vice president of forecasting at ABI Research Jake Saunders commented in the report.

A few months back, ABI Research forecasted that the value of the overall global business VoIP service market, which includes VoIP integrated access, SIP trunking, hosted IP-PBX (News - Alert) IP Centrex and managed IP-PBX services will surpass $20 billion by 2015, almost double its current figure.