Lenovo dislodges Micromax from 2nd spot in India smartphones biz

[powastick]

Lenovo's focus on offline channels and Xiaomi's move away from being an online-only vendor have paid off

Chinese tech-devices giant Lenovo has overtakenMicromax to become the second largest smartphone brand in India, Singapore-based analyst firm Canalys said. During the September quarter, shipment of Indian smartphone brands such as Micromax, Intex and Lava fell year-on-year, making way for Lenovo and Xiaomi to move up the ladder.

Another Chinese brand Xiaomi has captured the fourth spot in September quarter, the analyst firm noted. “Indian consumers are increasingly looking past local players’smartphones in favour of international brands. There is ongoing portfolio consolidation as local players change their product strategies, emphasising the 4G-enabled models that are now becoming mainstream. Besides having a strong LTE portfolio, channel strategy is increasingly important for smartphone success. Lenovo’s focus on offline channels and Xiaomi’s move away from being an online-only vendor have clearly helped. Xiaomi’s shipments grew by almost 170 per cent year-on-year, with its strongest quarter taking it to fourth place in an increasingly competitive market,” said Rushabh Doshi, analyst at Canalys.



As per preliminary data from another analyst firm Counterpoint Research, share of Chinese brands has increased further in India at the cost of Indian firms and market leader, Samsung. During 2016, Chinese brands’ share has increased to 32 per cent at the end of September from 21 per cent during the January-March quarter.

Market share of Micromax, on other hand, fell to 9.8 per cent in September from 17 per cent in March quarter. Intex, the third largest brand till June, went down to the fifth position after its share fell to 6.4 per cent. Market leader Samsung lost more than seven per cent share — from 29 per cent in March to 21.6 per cent in September.

“The above-Rs 10,000 segment has become significant as an increasing number of consumers are upgrading their smartphones, unlike earlier when conversion from feature phones tosmartphones used to be the key driver. This has thrown challenge to many popular brands, especially Indian-origin, operating in the market for long. Chinese brands have managed to come up with superior offering with value for money proposition in the Rs 10,000-15,000 price range,” said Faisal Kawoosa, general manager, telecom and semitronics at CyberMedia Research.

According to Doshi, Lenovo’s focus on offline channels and Xiaomi’s move away from being an online-only vendor have paid off. “Xiaomi’s shipments grew by almost 170 per cent year-on-year, with its strongest quarter taking it to fourth place in an increasingly competitive market,” said Rushabh Doshi, analyst, Canalys. “Despite its smartphone shipments halving, Micromax held onto third place, but it is coming under pressure from Xiaomi and fifth-placed Lyf,” he said.

According to a note issued by Canalys, smartphone market grew 20 per cent year-on-year during the quarter to cross 30 million units. Samsung held on to the top slot with “a share of just over 20 per cent”.

 

[AndrewJin]

There is still big potential in indian market.
Currently, shipments of entire year in India are similar to shipments of just one quarter in China.
However, phones with prices higher than $300 are not really welcome in india.
When purchasing power of indian consumers increases to a certain level, smart phones companies will prioritise middle/high-end phones in India.....

Even Apple, not longer among the top3 in China as it used to be, continues to open tens of new official stores in China while in india the number is zero.
Now, perhaps it's not the right timing to spend a lot of money in marketing better phones.
Focusing of cheaper phones in india seems to be the right strategy until there is a mature middle class.

“When is the Mi Mix Coming to India?” Xiaomi’s High-End Blues in India

It’s now official that Xiaomi isn’t bringing the newly announced Mi Note 2 and Mi Mix to India. The smartphones were launched amidst lots of fanfare in China yesterday, and the expectations of India launch gained momentum as Xiaomi took quite a few Indian journalists and bloggers to the launch event in Beijing.

Unfortunately, the Indian fans would have to deal with the disappointment of yet another cool product from Xiaomi which won’t see the light in India.

But then, Xiaomi’s strategy has been quite clear. The company never launched the Mi Note or the Mi Note Pro in India, although they did launch the Mi 3, Mi 4 and the Mi 5. While the Mi 3 and Mi 4 were launched at the fag end of their sale cycle, the Mi 5 was launched just weeks after the global launch. That probably peaked the expectations of Indian fans that Xiaomi is ready to launch other high-profile devices like the Mi 5s and Mi Note 2 in India.

But the truth is, the premium smartphone market in India is extremely thin.

As per Gartner, the Average Selling Price (ASP) of smartphones in India is $70 and smartphones under $120 contribute around 50% of overall smartphone sales here. Now consider the pricing of the new smartphones launched in China. The Mi Note 2 starts selling at $413 and goes all the way to $516 for the high-end variant. The Mi Mix starts at $516 and goes till $590 for the high-end variant. Lastly, the Mi 5s is priced at $295 for the base variant and goes all the way to $385 for the high-end Mi 5s Plus.

Someone like Xiaomi who operates on crazy thin margins would need real high volumes in sales to justify launching new products in new markets. Of course, the Indian economy is improving and smartphone market is booming, but the truth is, it’s still nowhere close to China. The biggest success for Xiaomi in India has been the Redmi Note 3 which retails for Rs 11,999 or $180. Compare that with the sales of Mi 5 in India. Although Xiaomi hasn’t disclosed how many units of Mi 5 it has managed to sell in the country, it’s an open secret within the industry that the sales are pretty dismal not just in comparison with Redmi Note 3, but the Mi 4 as well. Of course, the price isn’t the only factor playing with the fate of Mi 5, but it’s clear that Xiaomi has very little breathing space in the $300+ segment in India, with its nemesis, OnePlus 3 and others like the Lenovo Z2 Plus breathing down its neck. They still can’t completely ignore the higher mid-range market in India for branding and other reasons, so expect them to release at least one premium smartphone a year.

Someone like OnePlus is beautifully and successfully transitioning from a value player to a premium value player, and that’s where I think Xiaomi has failed, at least here in India. Considering that they’re facing the heat in their home country too, the company probably can’t afford to go bullish on newer terrains like India by launching too many products.

For Xiaomi to make any significant impact, they need to price the new smartphones even more competitively than they do in China, which simply doesn’t make business sense for the company. We have reached out to Xiaomi India for a comment and will update this post if and when we hear back from them.

 

[AndrewJin]

Hope Xiaomi could eventually sell Mi Mix in the emerging markets....

 

[Rajaraja Chola]

Unless you improvise you cannot win. Its a great lesson to Micromax, Intex and Karbonn.

 

[AndrewJin]

A bigger smart phone /4G telecommunication market is good news for a lot of countries


India ranks above US with 275mn smartphone connections; second only to China

It is no secret that smartphone penetration is growing at an exponential pace in India. Now a GSMA Intelligence report adds gravitas to that with official numbers, calling India the second largest smartphone market globally.

According to GSMA, India with its 275 million smartphone connections in Q2 2016, is now second only to China which has 910 million smartphone connections. India is ahead of the US which ranks at third spot with 259mn connections.

A large credit for these numbers go to the locally assembled smartphones which are priced as low as Rs 3,000, and also in part due to the rapid 3G and 4G network expansion.

In an interaction with the Times of India, Alasdair Grant, the head of Asia for GSMA said that the growth in smartphone connections in India will remain strong for the coming years as 3G and 4G networks expand in the country. According to Grant, growth will also be on an upward rise thanks to new entrants such as Reliance Jio.

According to Grant, the 4G connection base is expected to accelerate from 3 million at the end of 2015 to 280 million by 2020. This will be over 50 percent of the total connections in India by 2020. Mobile manufacturers such as Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Lenovo and others are ensuring that all their future phone releases will comprise 3G an 4G connectivity.

GSMA says that even the mobile operators are investing to improve the network coverage. The country should see 3G being available to 90 percent of the population by 2020 and 4G to be available to 70 percent population by then.

Since India is a market where a lot of people prefer using dual SIM smartphones, the total mobile users in the country stood at around 616 million by the end of June. According to the ‘India Mobile Economy’ report, GSMA thinks that around 330 mn new mobile users will be added by 2020.

A large part of these mobile user-base will also be a sort of a platform for the government to offer a variety of schemes and other services such as financial access, information dissemination and so on.

In terms of data traffic, the GSMA report said that there will be a compounded annual growth rate of 64 percent between 2015 and 2020, which is a 12-fold increase over present usage. Social networking and online communication will play a large role in this.

 

[ohmrlobalobayeh]

Unless you improvise you cannot win. Its a great lesson to Micromax, Intex and Karbonn.

Unless you improvise you cannot win. Its a great lesson to Micromax, Intex and Karbonn.

same as the logic here:

Regarding steel prices:


If Company X can accept making making lesser profits for the same type of goods then company Z, why should the former be blamed for 'dumping' when the latter is the 1 that is incapable of adapting? Why cant the typical American worker working in a steelmill agree to having a $5/hr wage instead of a $10/hr one?

In other words, why should other countries's uncompetitiveness be blamed on China?

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/china-co...he-world-combined.457241/page-3#ixzz4OM8jV0dV

If those Indian smartphone makers can adapt to Xiaomi's and Huawei's prices while matching the same kind of quality (e.g http://shanghaiist.com/2016/09/15/huawei_bulletproof.php ) and technology- then they would be able to stay in the race.

Unfortunately, most companies are incapable of doing so, not jsut in smartphones but practically in everything else..