It is well known that India is full of scientific and technological talents. Is Google CEO Sander of Indian descent? Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya? Nadella is also Indian.
According to the Kaufman Foundation, between 2006 and 2012, about 4 out of 10 companies in Silicon Valley had immigrant founders or co-founders, and about a third of them were started by Indians.
However, Indians, who are very popular in Silicon Valley, can’t even build a decent mobile phone in China. The latest report shows that Chinese mobile phone brands have captured more than half of the Indian smartphone market.
Chinese mobile phones occupy half of India
On July 26, Canalys, a research institute, released the latest report saying that in the second quarter of this year, the size of the Indian smartphone market shrank for the first time, with shipments of less than 27 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 4%.
But even so, Chinese mobile phone brands still occupy nearly half of the Indian market. Five Chinese mobile phone brands, Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, Gionee and Lenovo, have a market share of more than 50% in India. Moreover, Canalys said in its first-quarter report that Xiaomi is expected to surpass Samsung to become the No. 1 brand in the Indian market.
According to Canalys data, in the second quarter of India’s smartphone market share, Xiaomi was only behind Samsung and ranked second, accounting for 15.5%, and shipments in the second quarter reached 4.8 million units, 4 times that of the same period last year; vivo ranked Third, shipments in the Indian market reached an all-time high of 3.4 million units, accounting for 12.7%; OPPO and Lenovo ranked fourth and fifth, accounting for 9.6% and 8%.
In terms of models, Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 4 has the largest sales, accounting for 7.5% of the market; Redmi 4 accounts for 4.5%; Samsung J2 mobile phone has a 4.3% share.
Ishan Dutt, research analyst at Canalys, said, “The key to Xiaomi’s success is its online smartphone sales strategy. It targets young people who know how to use the internet and mainly conduct transactions online, so the abandonment of the currency policy in India at the end of last year was implemented. The impact on Xiaomi is very limited.
Research analyst Jia Mo said: “Vivo’s sales channel strategy, which relies on more dispersed individual retailers, has proven to be very effective. Vivo’s strategy of promoting sales through marketing activities has successfully seized some once-prosperous local markets. Manufacturer’s market.”
In addition, the World Wide Web quoted the “India Economic Times” report on July 25 that the rapid rise of Chinese mobile phone brands in India has caused people to worry about Indian local mobile phone brands. According to the data released by the well-known market research agency Counterpoint in the ET Telecom webinar, Chinese brands only accounted for about 7% of the Indian market share in the first quarter of 2014, while in the first quarter of 2017 they have seized about 51% of the market share . On the other hand, the market share of Indian mobile phone brands has also experienced a slump. In 2014, they had a market share of 49%, which has fallen to 16% in 2017.
“Driven by online and offline marketing channels, in about three years, Chinese brands have captured 51% of the mobile phone market. As Chinese brands are strong in the Chinese home market, they have achieved economies of scale, which has made their products in the Indian market. can keep prices lower,” said Neil Shah, director of market research at Counterpoint, during the webinar.
Relevant data released by Counterpoint shows:
The price of mobile phones in India is generally between 8000~15000 rupees (about 839~1573 yuan), mainly for Chinese brands;
Mobile phones priced at 8,000-10,000 Indian rupees accounted for about 25%, and mobile phones priced at 10,000-150,000 Indian rupees accounted for about 30%.
In addition, Chinese brands are more aggressive in promotion than Indian brands, especially OPPO and vivo, which do a lot of promotion through cricket and Bollywood. In 2016, vivo spent $78 million on advertising, while OPPO spent $66 million. In stark contrast, in 2016, local mobile phone brands such as Mircromax, Lava and Intex each spent less than $30 million on advertising.
Where are the mobile phones in India?
As the local mobile phone market is gradually occupied by Chinese brands, Indian mobile phone brands are also looking for another way out. As early as June 2016, the media reported that Micromax Informatics, the largest domestic smartphone manufacturer in India, said that the company plans to start in China in 2017. Sell mobile phones.
A phone from Micromax
The editor noticed that although Micromax is the largest mobile phone manufacturer in India, it has been losing ground in terms of market competition. At the end of 2014, Micromax claimed a market share of 22% in India, surpassing Samsung’s 20%, but this figure was not widely recognized by the market. Since then, Micromax’s market share has begun to decline, especially in the second half of 2014, when mobile phone brands from China gradually made efforts in the Indian market, this trend became more obvious.
Micromax co-founder Vikas Jain has said the company aims to become the world’s fifth-largest smartphone maker by sales by 2020. This goal is difficult to achieve without entering the Chinese market to compete for consumers, without going public or seeking private investment.
Whether it is the Indian market or Indian mobile phone manufacturers, low-priced smartphones are the mainstream, but are low-priced mobile phones from Indian brands competitive in China?
Take Micromax’s just-announced Canvas Spark 2 Plus smartphone as an example, which is called the lowest-priced Marshmallow smartphone (using Android 6.0 system), retailing for 3,900 Indian rupees, or about 390 yuan, using 854 ×480 resolution 5-inch capacitive touch screen, 1.3GHz quad-core processor, 1GB memory and 8GB storage space.
Some low-priced smartphones on an e-commerce platform
In contrast, among the smartphones currently sold on an e-commerce platform, the M1 model of a brand with the same configuration is priced at only RMB 320, and the lowest-priced smartphone on sale is only RMB 233. It can be seen that the Chinese market is cost-effective. How fierce is the competition among mobile phone companies for selling points. At present, there is no information about Micromax in the Chinese market.
In February this year, the media also reported that the Indian Ringtone Company launched a smartphone that it claims to be “the cheapest in the world”, priced at only 251 rupees (about 25 yuan). The phone, called “Freedom251” (Freedom251), was launched by Ringing Bells. When the pre-sale phase began, the company’s website was “crowded”. However, the Ringling Company received the payment but did not deliver the goods. As a result, the person in charge of the company was arrested by the Indian police on charges of fraud and forgery!
It can be seen that, whether in the domestic market or in the overseas market, Indian local mobile phone brands have been defeated. India, which is famous for its technology, seems to have only to make more efforts in other technology products.
The first Chinese mobile phone to gain a firm foothold in India
Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO, Gionee, and Lenovo have only begun to occupy the Indian market in recent years. But before that, there was already a little-known Chinese mobile phone company making a name for itself in India.
In 2008, Zhang Wenxue, the owner of a small mobile phone factory in Shenzhen, came to India. He was lucky to catch up with the first wave of Chinese mobile phones to seize the Indian market. Given that the Chinese mobile phone market is too competitive, he turned his attention to India, another populous country. This has also become the main force of its own brand Kivu (G-Five).
In a remote town in eastern India, Zhang Wenxue noticed that the local power supply was insufficient and frequent power outages seriously affected the normal use of mobile phones. As a result, the keen and witty Zhang Wenxue quickly found the first breakthrough to enter the Indian market: super-capacity batteries.
Unsurprisingly, such a domineering setting immediately set off a rush to buy in the Indian market. The hard work pays off. It is precisely because of these “intimate” functions that Nokia, Samsung and other big-name mobile phones do not have, and at the same time to meet the needs of different consumption levels ranging from tens to hundreds of yuan, Kivu has achieved great success in India. . In 2010, it shipped 35 million units in the Indian market, with a market share of 21%, far ahead of No. 2 Nokia (13%).
At that time, Kivu’s English name G‘FIVE is almost a household name in India. A brilliant record is that 33 TV stations across India are broadcasting G on loop‘FIVE’s ad.
For Zhang Wenxue at that time, making money should be a very easy thing, and some owners of spare parts foundries that cooperated with him also drove sports cars.
But when more and more participants were involved, the rules of the game suddenly changed. “The market has become a bit unreasonable. Do you know how much the cheapest feature phone in India is currently selling?” In 2012, Zhang Wenxue told reporters: 7.5 US dollars – this figure, in his opinion, has touched the survival of enterprises. Bottom line.
“For enterprises, there is no way to achieve such a price, but in this market, not one or two are doing this, but many.” Zhang Wenxue revealed helplessness in his words.
In April of this year, he made a decision to no longer compete with low prices. Not participating in price competition means giving up the original market share. Within a year, Kivu’s mobile phone sales in India were down 70 percent. Subsequently, Kivu gradually turned its focus to Pakistan, Iran, Myanmar and other regions.
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