New Delhi: Samsung India country head for mobile phones Vineet Taneja has stepped down, according to reports. Samsung did not confirm the development.
A report said he resigned due to pressure from the top management. Samsung could not sell its hi-end devices including the Galaxy S5 and Galaxy S4 smartphones in line with the expectations of the Korean headquarters.
Canalys tablet market share report for first quarter of 2014 (Q1 2014) for India today indicated a drop in the shipments of Apple and Samsung, while Lenovo, Acer and Asus gained. Samsung and Apple missed shipment targets mainly to Lenovo in India.
Earlier, Apple CEO Tim Cook said its sales in India in its latest quarter has almost doubled though the smartphone market grew only 55 percent.
Samsung leads the Indian smartphone market with 38.9 percent volume market share in the January-March quarter, followed by Micromax at 19.1 percent, Karbonn at 6.9 percent, Lava at 6.1 percent and Nokia at 5.3 percent.
Industry reports suggest that Samsung smartphone sales are growing at around 35-40 percent in India. Recently, Samsung Electronics cut down on its smartphone marketing budget globally in a bid to improve profitability.
In 2013, Samsung India posted revenue of Rs 38,000 crore, up 40 percent over previous year, driven largely by its mobile phone business.
It is said that Taneja was unhappy with the management changes which Samsung India effected early this year. He had to report to SK Kim who was made the managing director (sales) of the company, while earlier he was reporting directly to BD Park.
Taneja had joined Samsung India from Bharti Airtel where he was the operations director for South India and Sri Lanka. Prior to this, he was the chief marketing officer at Nokia India and had a long stint with Hindustan Unilever.
