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The wireline subscriber base in India as on March 31, 2007 was 40.38 mn, an 18.7% dip from FY 2005-06. With the mobile subscriber base booming, and enterprises opting for IP telephony, fixed phone segment saw a reasonable growth in FY 2006-07. This was due to the CLI, and cordless segment, which showed little growth, and are set to spearhead the growth in the market. Today, new features like backlit displays, battery backup, polyphonic ring-tones, and FM radio are becoming popular, as customers increasingly look for additional features on their fixed phones.

According to VOICE&DATA estimates, the fixed phone segment in FY 2006-07 stood at Rs 430 crore, growing 23.2% from FY 2005-06.

The leader in the fixed phone segment was Bharti Teletech with revenues of Rs 272 crore, growth of 21.4%, and market share of 63.3%. National Panasonic, who grew 19%, and registered revenue of Rs 113 crore with 26.3% market share, followed it. Among the others were ITI, UTL, BPL, Siemens and the Chinese players.

In FY 2006-07, Bharti Teletech sold 63,80,000 fixed-line phones, and 2,55,000 fixed wireless telephones. Exports contributed about 21% of their turnover of the fixed line and fixed wireless phones in FY2006-07, reiterating their position as a global manufacturer competing the Chinese players. They exported fixed phones to countries like Mauritius, Vietnam, and South Africa. Their tie up with Thomson for marketing of GE phones continued in this financial year too. ITI, another player in the fixed phone segment, sold 265,000 handsets in FY 2006-07.

National Panasonic sold 650,000 fixed-line phones, and bagged a number of clients from the corporate sector such as Infosys, Wipro, and TCS. Private telecom operator Airtel is also promoting cordless phones.

The top customers for Bharti Teletech in FY 2006-07 included HP Invent, Malayalam Manorama, HCL Infinet, HLL, and Mankind Pharma.

The growth has been positive in the cordless segment of which 2.4 GHz phones are a part, and the cordless segment is now contributing 15% of the total market, and is also growing at 15%.

UTL Group's revenue from CLIP Phones is about Rs 10 crore. The total number of CLIP sold is 150,000 during 2006-07. It supplied fixed phones to BSNL and MTNL.
On the other hand, the fixed wireless phones and terminals (FWP + FWT) market stood at Rs 1,588 crore, experiencing a marginal growth of 2%. Total number of wireless subscribers in fixed wireless (FWP+FWT) increased to 9.5 mn during 2006-07 from 6.6 mn during 2005-06.

LG maintained its leadership with revenues of Rs 792 crores, and shipping 400,000 FWP in FY 2006-07. Its growth was a marginal 1.8% due to reducing prices of the handsets. Moreover, the demand for FWPs grew only marginally. Market size of LG in FY '06-07 stood at 49.9%. Second in line was Axesstel, which provided 600,000 units to BSNL through XL Telecom, and supplied 250,00 units to Tata Teleservices. Its revenue stood at Rs 238 crore, a 24.6% growth as compared with previous year.

Huawei shipped 200,000 FWPs, and data cards in FY 2006-07. Owing to its shifting focus toward CDMA mobile handsets, it clocked revenue of Rs 75 crore, experiencing a dip of around 70%.

ZTE on the other hand saw a robust growth with its revenues growing from Rs 105 crore to Rs 185 crore, a jump of 76.2%, and registered a market share of 11.6%

Another manufacturer, ITI also experienced a dip in the revenues from FWP business, but number of handsets sold was 327,000 with respect to 278,000 in FY '05-06, and the dip was owing to the reduced price of FWPs.

Bharti Teletech is presently importing the cordless variant of GSM-FWP from South Korea's Telian and the desktop variant from Thompson CCT while it manufactures GSM-FWT in its Goa plant. It imported 250,500 GSM FWP from Telian and Thompson CCT and manufactured 154,000 FWT in FY '06-07, grossing revenues of Rs 65 crore and Rs 61 crore respectively.

New companies such as Brightpoint, JinPeng, Hisense, Handtel, and Rose Telecom also made their entry into the Indian market.