Indian mobile handset makers are revamping their offerings in the smartphones segment to stave off the strong Chinese challenge which has led to their market share being eroded further over the past year.
According to India Today, Gaurav Nigam, senior VP, head of product, Lava International said that “Chinese players have come to India with products that are better value propositions for consumers. We were not ready for the onslaught, but we have realised in the last year that to survive and be relevant, our product experience and quality have to go up by a high degree,”.
Data from Counterpoint Research shows Lava’s share in the Indian smartphone market has fallen from 5 per cent in July-September 2016 to 2 per cent within a year. On the other hand, Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Lenovo and Gionee together control over 50 percent of the market. The brand, whose market share fell from 3 per cent to 2 per cent, has joined hands with the country’s largest telecom operator, Airtel, to introduce its A40 4G smartphone for an effective price of Rs 1,399.
The offering is among a slew of low-cost smartphones announced to take on Mukesh Ambani’s Internet-enabled feature phone JioPhone which comes at a refundable deposit of Rs 1,500. Airtel has also tied up with Hyderabad-based Celkon to come out with a smartphone for Rs 1,349, while Vodafone India partnered with mobile handset firm Micromax to launch a 4G smartphone at an effective price of Rs 999.
Indian handset makers also believe that making the phones localised and more relevant is crucial to get feature phone users into the smartphones fold.
“While marketing muscle, strategy and aggression will give an advantage, the objective for anybody in the Indian ecosystem is to bring those half a billion users into smart telephony,” said Devsare. There are 320 million smartphone users in the country at present, while the number of feature phone users stand close to 500 million.
Senior market analyst at IDC, Jaipal Singh, said big opportunity lies in the lower end of the smartphone segment for Indian handset makers. “While the Chinese dominate the Rs 10,000-Rs 30,000 category, they are not entering the less-than-Rs 5,000 segment. This is a big segment considering the country’s mobile penetration and population. Indian handset makers have to come up with innovative solutions and quality in this segment.”
