A smartphone maker like HTC, which was at one point in time the poster boy of the Indian smartphone market has suffered a sad demise and shut shop wrapping up on an almost 9-year stint in India.
It was no surprise as many people could see this happening considering how HTC was going about its marketing and pricing strategies for its smartphones. No doubt that there is a Chinese hand behind its demise but the way I see it, HTC dug its own grave.
But, I am not here to rub salt into HTCs wounds. Rather, ever since this incident, the one question that’s been lingering inside my head is: Who’s next?
The Next in Line
You don’t have to be a genius to figure out which smartphone company is really pushing its luck when it comes to pricing smartphones.
For the ones still scratching their heads, I am talking about Sony and the recently launched Sony Xperia XZ2 could be the final nail in its coffin. Why? Because this Sony phone costs Rs 72,990!
This has been going on for a while now and it’s a surprise that this Japanese tech giant has been able to sustain itself in India for this long amidst rumours that it was done making phones.
Sony’s Mobile communications division reported a sales drop of 26.8 percent in the first quarter of 2018 and this was due to a decrease in unit sales of smartphones mainly in Europe and Japan. That means there’s trouble brewing overseas as well.
The recent slump for HTC has allowed me to come up with a theory of my own; see if you agree with this:
In India the price of the smartphones seems inversely proportion to the number of days the phone company will survive in the Indian market.
It’s true that Sony is offering its customers something out-of -the-box and premium with features like a super slo-mo camera, water-proofing and 4K HDR recording. But, this territory is dangerously close to where a Samsung or Apple is already dominant. So, which one would you go for if you had Rs 73,000?
BlackBerry too has been making similar mistakes, but I think Optiemus (BlackBerry’s manufacturing unit in India) isn’t really bothered about numbers.
Their recently launched BlackBerry Evolve and Evolve X though quote a “safe price tag” of Rs 24,990 and Rs 34,990. However, these phones still don’t offer premium specs like other Chinese players do. I believe the BlackBerry management is going to have something to worry about in the coming days.
We Have Survivors Here!
Smartphone brands like Motorola, Karbonn and Micromax have suffered the wrath of the Chinese takeover. On that note, Gionee, is one of the few Chinese brands that didn’t fare to well in India. It’s not that these companies did not try to woo Indian customers, but somewhere down the line they lacked the innovation and aggressive pricing strategies that companies like Honor, Xiaomi and Oppo have been able to bring to the table. In a nutshell, they lacked masala.
However, it’s not that all Chinese brands have managed to do well in India. Motorola, now owned by Lenovo (a Chinese firm), is a mere shadow of what it was a couple of years ago and is clearly frustrated at how things are progressing.
Lenovo’s (including Motorola) smartphone shipments declined prodigiously in the fourth quarter of 2017. If this isn’t a sign of things to come, I don’t know what is.
Just a suggestion to Motorola. Try handing out better processors than a Snapdragon 660 with your mid-range phones. It will make your stay in India much better.
The fact is that the aforementioned smartphone brands have just been ‘surviving’ in India instead of thriving. This is the world’s second-largest smartphone market people!
Remember LeEco and ZTE? Yes, of course you do. These are the same brands which sold phones in India at very competitive prices especially in the sub-Rs 15,000 category. LeEco in particular came all guns blazing and was investing in India also looking to enter the content streaming segment. It even went to the extent of setting up a 7-million dollar manufacturing unit in Greater Noida!
In the end, the company had to shutdown in India after firing almost 85 percent of its staff.
The Safe Zone
India is a gold mine for brands like Xiaomi and Samsung who have hit the ball out of the park when it comes to giving the Indian consumer what they want. The trick is you have to be a smart miner - knowing exactly who to target.
Since these two have secured the top spots in the Indian market, they’re in the safe zone and don’t have to worry about packing their bags anytime soon.
The recent IDC (International Data Corporation) report states that brands like Xiaomi and Samsung have ruled the roost in 2017 and that trend seems to be continuing.
Just recently, OnePlus released a front page ad in a prominent Indian newspaper boasting its considerable growth in the Rs 30,000 and above smartphone market. It even managed to trump Samsung in this space.
This is a Chinese company that has been in India for more than four years and its graph is pointing towards the north. Hence, OnePlus is the least likely to make an exit.
And then there’s Apple! The company has one of its biggest markets in India. Now worth a trillion dollars, Apple has always been serious about the Indian market and the same predicates the fact that it makes the Apple iPhone SE in India.
With the financial backing that Apple has, rest assured Apple isn’t going anywhere.
It’s clear that there are certain successful smartphone makers like Samsung and Xiaomi that have understood what consumers want.
But what about the ones staring down the barrel? I believe its too late for these brands to recover unless they change their pricing strategies and also provide competitive specs. The Indian janta love heavy spec’ed phones.
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