SMARTPHONE INDUSTRY IN INDIA (2017)

AN INSIGHT INTO THE SMARTPHONE INDUSTRY IN INDIA

Analyzing the Present Smartphone Market Situation

Smartphone market in India is highly price sensitive due to a large diversity of income level people present in the country and more people entering the upper middle and middle class from low level. It is very important for any company to get it's pricing correct in a market where the average price of a mobile is just $100. 

Year 2016 was a fantastic year for smartphone industry in India witnessing highly aggressive pricing policy by companies and consumers enjoying best for every rupee they spent. 
In first quarter of 2016 Indian market surpassed America's smartphone market to become world's second largest smartphone market.
The smartphone shipment in 3rd quarter reached 32.3 million units, crossing 30 million mark for the first time. 

A interesting point here is growing dominance of 
Chinese OEMs since they are able to provide features comparatively at very low price level. A decent part of others in pie graph above is Xiaomi's share. Although Samsung remains at the top as always but it saw a decline in the market share due to these Chinese companies like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo. 
The boom in the demand in Q3 can be accounted to the festive season and various big discounts offered by amazon, flipkart and snapdeal.

What's the Big Deal?

Why are so many Smartphone Manufacturing Firms are eyeing India as their next Big Market?

Smartphone industry in India is booming these days and much of it is credited to increase in purchasing power of common man as well as highly aggressive pricing policy of products by many smartphone manufacturers.


India has the fastest-growing smartphone market in the world, accounting for 27.5 million devices sold in the second quarter of 2016, up 17 percent from the previous quarter, according to IDC. Mobile subscriptions are expected to hit 1.4 billion by 2021, according to the Ericsson Mobility Report, released in June 2016.

Since a large percentage of population in India is young, it has high demand for consumer goods like smartphones. This is what make companies to get attracted to India. Other smartphone markets like U.S. have saturated over time, but India still have large demand for smartphones.  

What changes has

MAKE IN INDIA initiative made?

Earlier companies used to import their smartphones from china and other nations to fulfill India’s ever increasing requirement. Even the domestic companies like Micromax, Karrbon, Lava, Intex were getting their phones assembled in China and then getting imported to India.

But now this scenario has changed. Indian based Smartphone manufacturing firms have setup their manufacturing units in the country and even some Chinese firms like Xiaomi, Gionee are assembling their handsets at Foxconn plant in Andhra Pradesh. As per industry sources, Chinese company LeEco will also start mobile manufacturing unit on 30^th August 2016.

In Q2 2016, Make in India initiative was the primary reason for the growth of budget smartphones. The count of brands manufacturing/assembling domestically jumped from 10 to 35. It contributed to almost 70% of the total smartphone production volume during the quarter. - dazeinfo.com

It was a huge quarter for Indian brands - their share of the smartphone market was at an all-time high of 45%, while 67% of all phones shipped were made in India, according to CyberMedia Research's India mobile handset 

Read more at:

http://bit.ly/2jpSDQP

The program MAKE IN INDIA not only reduces the production cost of handsets but also increases supply to increasing smartphone consumer base in India.

India has attracted investment from 37 mobile manufacturing companies in last one year that have generated 40,000 direct jobs and 1.25 lakh indirect employment.

OPPO is planning to invest 1.5 billion yuan ($ 215 million) to build an industrial park in India to bring down manufacturing cost, according to media reports earlier last month. The company already has a factory in Greater Noida. 

Read more at:
https://goo.gl/1bzJvC

In the last one year, 37 new mobile manufacturing units have come in India helping to achieve to become a big hub of electronics manufacturing.11 crore mobile phones have been made in the country in last one year compared to 6 Crore earlier.Government has provided Rs. 10,000 Crore under Electronics Development Fund to support new entrepreneurs in the field of electronics. 

The Electropreneur Park (EP), which was inaugurated in South Campus of Delhi University, is an incubation centre set up with government funds of around Rs. 21 Crore to support incubation of up to 50 companies.

Currently, India imports electronic goods of over Rs. 3 lakh crore. The setup of Electropreneur Park is a step in direction to reach goal of bringing imports to zero by 2020 by Government.