Handset sales drop
Mobile phone sales dropped in the first nine months of the year, with the industry now bracing itself for a full-year of negative growth -- a first for the sector.
Bangladesh Mobile Phone Importers Association (BMPIA) is blaming the slump on the illegal imports and counterfeit products.
“The market is filled with illegal imports and low-quality counterfeit devices,” Mohammed Mesbah Uddin, joint secretary of BMPIA, said at a press conference yesterday.
Illegal imports have soared more than 40 percent, depriving the government of revenue of about Tk 4,000 crore, according to the association's estimation.
“It was always there but in recent times this has become a direct threat to our business,” said Md Ruhul Alam Al Mahbub, president of BMPIA.
In 2017 the industry had imported 3.44 crore units of handsets. But this year, the number will be less than 3 crore. In first nine months of the year, smartphone import dropped 17 percent year-on-year to 50 lakh units.
“Many shops in the capital including Bashundhara City, Jamuna Future Park, Motalib Plaza and Eastern Plaza sell illegally imported smartphones,” Uddin said.
Most of the Xiaomi and iPhone smartphones enter the market illegally and Samsung is also facing this problem, according to Mahbub, who is also the chairman of Fair Group, a distributor of Samsung phones. As many as 35 percent of the Samsung smartphones come to the market illegally through airports and land ports, he added. Leaders of the associations also pointed out the poor quality of the 4G network for the poor sales.
BMPIA urge the government to reduce the supplementary duty from 10 percent to 5 percent on mobile phone imports and waive the 5 percent value-added tax.
“If the government give us that kind of support we can assemble the entire country's demand within next couple of years,” said Jakaria Shahid, managing director of Edison Group, the parent company of market leader handset vendor Symphony.
