The purpose of this paper is to predict the switching behavior of the students with respect to mobile brands. This paper uses first-order Markov Chain model for predicting the switching behavior and also analyzes the future market scenario of the mobile brands. Data collected from 320 college-going students show very high probability of brand switching behavior among the students and they intend to switch their mobile brands. The findings reveal that in the long run, it is the technology that will lead than any single brand. It has been observed that there will be high retention in the brand Apple.

With the advent of information technology, 21st century would be a cellular age going by the phenomenal increase in cellphones worldwide (Sathish et al., 2011). India is experiencing a tremendous growth of mobile penetration in the context of its high development potential. India has surpassed USA to become the second largest cellular market in the world with over 886 million cellphone users in December 2013 (Sathish et al., 2011). According to the Telecom Subscription Data, India has become the key hub of the world’s mobile and telecom market with 957.61 million users as on September 30, 2014. The overall teledensity has increased to 76.75% and the total number of mobile phone subscribers has reached 930.20 million. In the wireless segment, 5.88 million subscribers were added in September 2014 and the wireline segment subscriber base stood at 27.41 million. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India in its report said that “private operators hold 90.05% of the wireless subscriber market share, whereas BSNL and MTNL, the two PSU operators, hold only 9.95% market share.”

Portrayal of Women, Predicting the Consumers, Brand Switching Behavior for Cellphones, Application of Markov Chain Models