EXECUTIVE COMMUNICATION

PROJECT REPORT

A STUDY ABOUT MOBILE HANDSET PREFERENCE AMONG YOUTH IN KOCHI, KERALA

Submitted By:
Group No: 2 (MBA-A) Anuranjan Kulu Dinoy M.B Joe Mathai Neethu Mohan
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Resmi. S Teenu Treasa

Declaration

We, hereby declare that this dissertation entitled on A STUDY ABOUT MOBILE HANDSET PREFERENCE AMONG YOUTH IN KOCHI, KERALA, has been prepared by Anuranjan Kulu, Dinoy, Joe Mathai, Neethu Mohan, Resmi. S and Teenu Treasa (MBA-A: 2010-2012) under the supervision and guidance of Mrs. Susan Mathew, Lecturer, Dept of Management Science RCBS, Kakkanad.

We also hereby declare that this is a bonafide record of dissertation work done by us during the course of our study.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

TITLE
INTRODUCTION RESEARCH METHODOLOGY REVIEW OF LITERATURE

PAGE NO.

DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION FINDINGS CONCLUSION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

India has emerged as the fastest growing mobile handset market in the world. The Indian mobile market is primarily dominated by the youngsters who account for 32 percent of the total market. Understanding the youth's preference is a prerequisite for handset manufacturers to sustain or create a competitive advantage in the emerging market. This paper throws light on the factors that motivate the youth to own mobile handsets. The paper mainly explores the functional aspects of owning a handset and focuses on understanding the relative importance of the reasons for the purchase and the attributes that college-going students generally look for while buying a handset. The prime objective of the study was to understand the variation in the importance given by different age and gender group to the select factors while buying mobile handset in India. India is the worlds 12th largest consumer market . It is projected that by 2025 India become fifth largest economy in the world ahead of Germany. There is an explosive growth in all the areas of consumer goods and services. Communication that accounts for 2 percentage of consumer spending today will be one of the fastest expanding categories with growth of about 13 percentages. Mobile telecommunication industry has shown a tremendous growth over the last few years. The market of mobile handset is also growing with the growing demand of
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telecommunication. At present India is the second largest market for mobile handset. The growth in this sector has been improved due to liberalization of telecommunication laws and regulations. The consumers of both rural and urban college going students to mature elders almost all group have started using mobile telecom services.

Objectives Of The Study

To study the attitude of teenagers and youth age group 15-30 towards cellular phones. Enumerate preference of handset as gender wise and age wise.

Investigate their awareness about new trends in mobile handset industry. Study about market segmentation of mobile handset industry.

Study about the new technological trends in mobile handset industry. Study brand loyalty of mobile handsets.

CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Research Methodology
Research methodology denotes the way in which a research problem is systematically solved. It includes all steps that are taken by researcher in solving the research problem with the logic behind applying each of them.

To ensure primary research conducted in Cochin, Kerala. A detailed questionnaire was used to collect information from respondents.

Methods of data collection The source of primary data was collected by interviews with the respondents using schedules. The collected data analyzed and interpreted by using percentage analysis and expressed in the form of using tables and diagrams. Secondary data collected from magazines, reference books, internet etc. Sample size The sample size denotes the no of samples used for conducting the study. The total sample size consists of 30 people. Tools used
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Questionnaire was used to conduct the survey. It contains objective type questions, each questions has to be framed increase the reliability of the data. Advantages of using this approach were simplicity of data processing., analysis and interpretation.

Limitations

Most of the respondents do not reveal the correct information. The sample size of the study is limited to 30, so opinion is not general one. The study is based on primary data, so limitation of primary data also affects the study.

CHAPTER 3 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

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A mobile phone (also called mobile, cellular telephone, cell phone or hand phone) is an electronic device used for full duplex two-way radio telecommunications over a cellular network of base stations known as cell sites. Mobile phones differ from cordless telephones, which only offer telephone service within limited range through a single base station attached to a fixed land line, for example within a home or an office. The mobile phone"the latest incarnation of the telephone" has been commercially available in India since the last decade. The reasons behind the ubiquitous acceptance and presence of the device were the favorable policies of the government, development of small handsets, radical fall in handset prices, and the commercialization of prepaid subscriptions. Since then, the device has become an inseparable part of the lives of almost all people irrespective of their gender, class, and age. From being a rich man's accessory to being owned by all and sundry, the mobile handset has really come a long way. Previously, simple mobile handsets were in vogue. Afterwards manufactures started adding several attributes to the handsets. These attributes were luring the users who wanted more from their mobile handsets. Though many of them have become obsolescent in the western part of the world, they are still new to India. Calling and messaging is a basic feature in contemporary handsets. These days mobile handsets are sold predominantly for their browsing, mailing, storage capabilities, and several other classy attributes such as camera and MP3 players. The increased competition among various telecommunication companies has increased the demand for mobile telecom service as well as handsets. According to Indian Brand equity foundation (2005)
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the mobile handset market which was worth rupees 2 billion dollar two years ago shown a growth of 60% per annum. The GSM handsets had a market share of 84% and CDMA had 16 % market share. There are various players in GSM market. Nokia is leading the market with 59% old market share .Among other player; the prominent are Sony Ericson, Motorola, Samsung and LG. They are offering wide range of products to the consumers at different price range. The manufactures are introducing newer and newer models in quick succession of time. They are motivated to do so because Indian mobile subscribers are prepared to pay for upgrades, value based service, and advanced models. The cut through competition between manufactures has forced them to decrease the prices of the handsets. Mobile phones today have moved from its fundamental role of communication and have graduated to become an extension of the personality of the user. There is a dissemble preference for color display screens over the black and white one. Consumers are also making wide use of handset to clicking photographs, playing games, chatting, listening music, downloading icons, screen savers, music, ringtones etc. HISTORY Radiophones have a long and varied history going back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore-to-ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s, while hand-held mobile radio devices have been available since 1973. The first mobile telephone call made from a car occurred in St. Louis, Missouri, USA on June 17, 1946, but the system was impractical from what is considered a portable handset today. The equipment weighed 80 lbs, and the AT&T service, basically a massive party line, cost $30 USD per month (equal to $334.15 today) plus 30 to 40 cents
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per local call, equal to $3.34 to $4.46 today. In 1960, the worlds first partly automatic car phone system, Mobile System A (MTA), was launched in Sweden. MTA phones were composed of vacuum tubes and relays, and had a weight of 40 kg. In 1962, a more modern version called Mobile System B (MTB) was launched, which was a push-button telephone, and which used transistors in order to enhance the telephones calling capacity and improve its operational reliability. In 1971 the MTD version was launched, opening for several different brands of equipment and gaining commercial success. Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher and executive is considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for hand-held use in a non-vehicle setting, after a long race against Bell Labs for the first portable mobile phone. Using a modern, if somewhat heavy portable handset, Cooper made the first call on a hand-held mobile phone on April 3, 1973 to his rival, Dr. Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs. The first commercially automated cellular network (the 1G generations) was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979, initially in the metropolitan area of Tokyo. Within five years, the NTT network had been expanded to cover the whole population of Japan and became the first nation-wide 1G network. In 1981, this was followed by the simultaneous launch of the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) system in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. NMT was the first mobile phone network featuring international roaming. The first 1G network launched in the USA was Chicago based Ameritech in 1983 using the Motorola Dyna TAC mobile phone. Several countries then followed in the early 1980s including the UK, Mexico and Canada. The first "modern" network technology on digital 2G (second generation) cellular technology was launched by Radiolinja (now part of Elisa Group) in 1991 in Finland on the GSM standard which also
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marked the introduction of competition in mobile telecoms when Radiolinja challenged incumbent Telecom Finland (now part of TeliaSonera) who ran a 1G NMT network. In 2001 the first commercial launch of 3G (Third Generation) was again in Japan by NTT DoCoMo on the WCDMA standard. One of the newest 3G technologies to be implemented is High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). It is an enhanced 3G (third generation) mobile telephony communications protocol in the HighSpeed Packet Access (HSPA) family, also coined 3.5G, 3G+ or turbo 3G, which allows networks based on Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) to have higher data transfer speeds and capacity. HANDSET FEATURES All mobile phones have a number of features in common, but manufacturers also try to differentiate their own products by implementing additional functions to make them more attractive to consumers. This has led to great innovation in mobile phone development over the last twenty years. The common components found on all phones are:

A rechargeable battery providing the power source for the phone functions

An input mechanism and display to allow the user to interact with the phone. The most common input mechanism is a keypad, but touch screens are also found in some high end smart phones.

Basic mobile phone services to allow users to make calls and send text messages.
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All GSM phones use a SIM card to allow an account to be swapped among devices. Some CDMA devices also have a similar card called a R-UIM.

Individual GSM, WCDMA, iDEN and some satellite phone devices are uniquely identified by an International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) number.

Low-end mobile phones are often referred to as feature phones, and offer basic telephony, as well as functions such as playing music and taking photos, and sometimes simple applications based on generic managed platforms such as Java ME or BREW. Handsets with more advanced computing ability through the use of native software applications became known as smart phones. The first smart phone was the Nokia 9000 Communicator in 1996 which added PDA functionality to the basic mobile phone at the time. As miniaturization and increased processing power of microchips has enabled ever more features to be added to phones, the concept of the smart phone has evolved, and what was a high-end smart phone five years ago, is a standard phone today. Several phone series have been introduced to address a given market segment, such as the RIM BlackBerry focusing on enterprise/corporate customer email needs; the Sony Ericsson Walkman series of music phones and Cyber shot series of camera phones; the Nokia N series of multimedia phones, the Palm Pre the HTC Dream and the Apple iphone. Other features that may be found on mobile phones include GPS navigation, music (MP3) and video (MP4) playback, RDS radio receiver, alarms, memo recording, personal digital assistant functions, ability to watch streaming video, video download, video calling, built-in cameras (1.0+ Mpx) and camcorders (video recording), with
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autofocus and flash, ringtones, games, PTT, memory card reader (SD), USB (2.0), dual line support, infrared, Bluetooth (2.0) and WiFi connectivity, instant messaging, Internet e-mail and browsing and serving as a wireless modem. Nokia and the University of Cambridge demonstrated a bendable cell phone called the Morph.

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CHAPTER 4 DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

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Data Analysis And Interpretations

In this study the researchers analyses the data and inference are derived from them. The main objective of this study under this chapter is to bring out the true dimensions of the data and to make clear the options, ideas and suggestions of the respondents. Table 1 Gender wise classification of respondents
Classification

No: of respondents 16 14 30

Percentage 53 47 100

Male Female Total

The above table shows the gender wise classification of the respondents. From the analysis it is clear that 53 % of respondents are male and 47 % are female. Figure 1

Table 2 Classification based on age group of the respondents Age group 15-20 20-25 No: of respondents 1 13
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Percentage 3 54

25-30 Total

16 30

43 100

The above table shows the age group of respondents. From the analysis it is clear that 3 % of respondents come under the age group of 15-20, 54 % under 20-25 and 43 % under 25-30.

Figure 2

Table 3 Table showing whether the respondents owned a mobile phone or not Status Yes No Total No: of respondents 30 0 30 Percentage 100 0 100

The above table shows that

100 % of the respondents owned a mobile.

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Figure 3

Table 4 Table showing the type of mobile phone owned by the respondents Type Nokia Apple iphone Reliance Black Berry LG Sony Ericsson Others Total No: of respondents 15 5 3 3 2 2 0 30 Percentage 50 17 10 10 6.5 6.5 0 100

From the above table it is clear that 50 % of respondents use Nokia phones, 17 % uses Apple iphone, 10 % uses reliance, 10 % uses Black Berry,6.5 % uses LG, 6.5 % uses Sony Ericsson .

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Figure 4

Table 5 Table showing the type of connection used by the respondents Type Prepaid Postpaid Total No: of respondents 14 16 30 Percentage 46 54 100

The above table shows that 46% of respondents are using prepaid connections and 54 % are using postpaid connections.

Figure 5

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Table 6 Table showing the service provider to the mobile phones of the respondents Service provider Airtel Idea Vodafone Reliance Bsnl Others Total No: of respondents 13 4 7 3 3 0 30 Percentage 43 13 24 10 10 0 100

The above table shows that 43 % of respondents use Airtel connection, 13 % uses Idea, 24 % uses Vodafone, 10 % uses Reliance, and 10 % uses Bsnl .

Figure 6

Table 7 Table showing the one who bought mobile phone to the respondents
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No: of respondents Father Brother Self Company Others Total 19 3 8 0 0 30

Percentage 63 10 27 0 0 100

The above table shows that majority of respondents got mobile phones from their (63 % by father, 10% by brother, and 27 % by self)

Figure 7

Table 8 Table showing reasons for owing a mobile phone Reasons Everybody had one you wanted to buy it
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No: of respondents 2

Percentage 7

somebody asked you to get

13

No landline connection

17

Convenience in calling

13

43

Messaging

17

Other reason

Total

30

100

From the above table we can analyze that majority of the respondents own a mobile phone because of the convenience in calling. Figure 8

Table 9 Table showing accessories bought with mobile phones Accessories Only mobile cover No. of respondents 25 Percentage 83

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Only a waist pouch

Only a chord /string

10

None

Others

Total

30

100

From the above table majority of the respondents bought only mobile cover with mobile phones. Figure 9

Table 10 Table showing how often the respondents change the mobile phones Changing Time Less than 6 months 6-12 months More than 1 yr Total No. of respondents 5 5 20 30
25

Percentage 17 17 66 100

The above table shows that 17 % of respondents change their mobile within 6 months, 17 % within 6-12 months and 66 % more than 1 year.

Figure 10

Table 11 Table showing No. of mobile phones respondents family owns

Number Only 1 2-3 4-5 Above 5 Total

No. of respondents 0 12 16 2 30

Percentage 0 40 53 7 100

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The above table shows that about 0 % of respondents families are having only 1 mobile phone, 40 % are having 2-3 mobile phones, 53 % are having 4-5, and 7% are having more than 5 mobile phones in their family. Figure 11

Table 12 Table showing the respondents reason for choosing the present model of mobile phone Reason Price Appearance Functions Size and weight Trend Achievement Others Total No. of respondents 9 5 10 3 3 0 0 30 Percentage 30 17 33 10 10 0 0 100

From the above table 30 % of respondents choose the mobile phones considering the price, 17 % appearance, 33 % functions, 10 % size & weight, and 10 % considering the trend.
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Figure 12

Table 13 Table showing the satisfaction of respondents with their mobile

Opinion Yes No Total

No. of respondents 28 2 30

Percentage 93 7 100

From the above table it is clear that about 93 % of respondents are satisfied with their mobile phones and only 7% are dissatisfied.

Figure 13

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Table 14 Table showing the most important facility that should be in a mobile phone Facility Internet access Camera Games Video calling Magic voice FM Others Total No. of respondents 9 8 2 2 3 6 0 30 Percentage 30 26 7 7 10 20 0 100

From the above table about 30% of respondents wanted internet access along with their mobile phone as an added facility,26% wanted camera, 7% wanted games, again 7% voted for video calling, 10% for magic voice and 20% wanted FM in their mobile phones. Figure 14

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CHAPTER 5 FINDINGS

FINDINGS
Following were the findings that were disclosed from the analysis of the data:
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100 % of the respondents owned a mobile. About 54% of respondents were in the age group of 20-25. In that 53% of the respondents were male. Reason for owning a mobile phone was it was convenient in calling. Majority bought only mobile cover with the phones. Mobile phone changing period of 66% respondents were more than 1 year. Almost all families had 3-4 mobiles. Majority choose the present mobile phone considering its functions. Around 93% of the respondents were satisfied with their mobile phones. From the analysis it was clear that majority preferred internet access as an added facility that should be provided with the mobile phones.

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CHAPTER 6 CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION

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The mobile telecom services are now being widely consumed by the Indian society. Rather these have become an essential part of their lives. Besides communication, people now seek entertainment and other features that are compatible to their self-image and lifestyle. The self-image and lifestyle may vary among genders and different age groups. Therefore, the study was carried out among consumers of different age and gender groups to understand the importance of factors that influence their mobile handset buying. The intense competition between manufacturers has forced them to expand their market base. The study concludes that the users of age group of 18-30 years are less price sensitive than consumers of other groups; rather they consider physical appearance, brand, value added features, and core technical features more important than users of any other age groups.. The mature consumers on the other hand may have priorities for other products due to other obligations. That is why they are more price-sensitive. Also they have less knowledge about new technological developments and therefore, consider value added features, brand and core technical features less important. Overall, people have given the least preference to the core technical features. This is probably due to the high price difference between handsets with highly advanced technical features and other handsets. Also female consumers gave only low to moderate preference to this factor. The study also reveals that the consumer does not bother much about the price of handset provided they are satisfied with other features.

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ANNEXURE

QUESTIONNAIRE 34

A STUDY ABOUT THE MOBILE HANDSET PREFERENCE AMONG YOUTH IN KOCHIN KERALA 1. 2. 3. 4. Gender : Male Female Age group : 15-20 20-25 25-30 Do you own a mobile phone? Yes No Currently you own a Nokia Apple iphone Reliance Black berry LG Sony ericsson The service provider is Airtel Idea Vodafone Reliance BSNL Others, Specify______________ You are in to Prepaid Postpaid Who bought mobile for you? Father Brother Self Company Others Reason for owing a mobile phone? Everybody around you already had one with them You wanted to buy it Somebody asked you to get one for yourself No landline connection Convenience in calling Messaging Other reason

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. What accessories have you bought with your mobile? Only mobile cover Only a waist pouch Only a chord /string 35

None Others 10.Which Mobile company will be your second preference? Specify ________________________________________ 11.How often do you change your mobile phone? Less than six month 7-12 months More than one year 12.How many mobile phones do your families have? Only one 1-3 4-5 Above 5 13.Write the model of your phone?_________________________________ 14.Why did you choose this model? Price Appearance Function Size and weight Trend Achievements Others 15.Are you satisfied with your mobile phone? Yes No 16.Which do you think you do must with your mobile phone? Internet access Camera Games Video calling Magic voice FM 17.Rate your phone N o A Particulars Battery Back up Bad Good Very Good Excellent

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B C D E F G

Price in relation with features Network reception Style Frequency problem Customer service availability Brand value

18.Suggestions :

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