The High and Low End Phones - 2019

High End of Phones - Folding screen Phones

2019 will remain special for smartphone enthusiasts as foldable phones made their way to shelves. The first one to be commercially available (Royole FlexPai) was the one which was most critisized by reviewers due to it's no confidence inspiring hinge for screen fold and inappropriate software experience. 

Samsung fold gained most attention as it's screen started to rip days after it was handed to reviewers. Reviewers had removed a film on screen that wasn't supposed to be. Samsung got away from Note 7 like fiasco as this came to lime-light before public launch. Despite initial negative feedback on screen fragility, Samsung fold recieved worldwide acceptance on it's relaunch, as being the best attempt for a folding phone by any smartphone maker in 2019.

Huawei Mate X was seen as strong competitor to Samsung Fold at it's showcase event, but it never got available to buy for common people, most probably due to U.S. ban on Huawei. 

Motorola Razr's re-introduction in late 2019 as folding screen phone revived nostalgia.

 LG took a more conserative approach with it's G8X ThinQ, launching it with two fully seperate screens held in case. Looking at leaked images of Samsung next foldable, folding screen phones future seems to be good. Folding screen phones in early stages are very expensive and defintely not for rough usage. It is very hard to comment on time frame till which we can expect a good folding screen phone in budget segment but this feature will likely remain a hot topic in 2020.

Low End of Phones - Feature Phones

Unlike smartphone, feature phone market has continued to grow in last three years. More than 400 million feature phones were sold globally in 2019 and this number is expected to rise to 1 billion by 2021. India and Middle East Africa capture more than half of global feature phone market share. iTel, Nokia, Jio and Samsung are major feature phone makers worldwide. Nokia showcased two interesting feature phones in 2019 - Nokia 2720 Flip and Nokia 800 Tough.

As the name suggests, Nokia 800 tough is IP68 and MIL-STD-810G certified making it dust, water and shock resistant. Powered by the Qualcomm 205 mobile platform, it runs on KaiOS. It is made for those who prefer weeks long battery life but still want to keep in touch of digital world with apps like google assistant, facebook and whatsapp.

On the other hand, Nokia 2720 flip has a claimsheel like design with small outer display for notifications, revealing a much larger inner display on flipping it open.   

IPL LIVE STREAMING & HOTSTAR

Being an avid cricket fan, I was not at all happy when IPL live streaming was disrupted with a Hotstar's "To continue Please SUBSCRIBE" kind of popup message on my laptop screen. I was surprised for a while since i could watch it for free on Hotstar app in my phone, most probably due to Jio subscription. I wondered what if Hotstar allows free live streaming of IPL matches on it's app for all smartphone users, keeping live streaming from laptop reserved for subscribed users. 

How can Hotstar benefit from such a discrimination?

Hotstar's subscription plans are just like that of any other media streaming service i.e. subscribe for ad free experience and exclusive content... and just like others, it makes money out of subscriptions and ads displayed on it's platform.

With ads rates being quite high due to viewership reaching as high as 10 million during some moments of an IPL match, Hotstar can go for all ad based revenue model on all devices for IPL live streaming. But the fact that they have subscription plan for ad free experience reveals the insight that subscription from an individual pays them more than ads being directed at him/her.

Well then they can have only subscription based option for IPL live streaming. This is also not an viable option for a country like India where only small proportion  of interested population is actually capable to pay for such plans. Intense competition in Indian smartphone market to capture larger market share has led to players getting involved in price wars. The 4G revolution in India by Reliance Jio's entry has led to India having cheapest 4G plans in the world. These two simultaneous events in last two 2 years, have led to huge population from tier-3 cities, tier-4 towns and villages to get online and enjoy live streaming for the very first time. If Hotstar opts for only subscription based model for IPL live streaming, they will miss out on ad revenue from this new audience.

The right option is to have both streams open as source of revenue i.e. getting people who are capable to subscribe and by directing ads on who are aren't.

By denying interested people to live stream IPL matches for free on big screens, they are either getting them to watch on smartphones or getting them to subscribe. But why big screens like P.C., laptops and T.V.s ?

The motive behind such a discrimination should be that with such a practise, Hotstar will be able to successfully segment it's market/user-base based on spending capabilities without actually knowing their viewer's income/wealth status and thus will be able to get people who are essentially capable, to pay for their services. 

Generally, laptop users are college students and working class professionals from tier-1 and tier-2 cities of India. These users also constitute a major portion of Indian youth population. It is proven that young population exhibit higher propensity to spend money on subscription based services and since these people reside in top tier cities, they also posses high spending capacity.

Moreover, If a person is live streaming on laptop or T.V., then there is a very high probability that person has subscribed to some broadband plan. This broadband plan subscription is enough to justify for his/her high-spending capability and very much increases chances of that person getting subscribed to one of the plans. This is how Hotstar will be able to segregate their users based on spending capability.

FEATURE PHONES : STILL ALIVE, BUT WHY ?

Nokia Banana phone
 Source : theverge

First of all, let's get some recent fact and figures out of the way...

According to Counterpoint Research, global feature phone shipments increased 3% annually reaching 112 million units in Q-3 of 2018. Global feature phone shipment grew consecutively for four quarters from Q-4 2017 to Q-3 2018 whereas smartphone market experienced a small decline in global shipments during the same period. 

Here is a graph depicting the contrast in shipments between smartphones and feature phone markets.

Image source: counterpointresearch

Where does sale of feature phone comes from?

Around 90% of feature phone market is in Asia and Africa. More specifically, Middle East and Africa (MEA) and India account for more than 70% of feature phone global sales. 

Reliance Jio created disruption in feature phone market with introduction of Jio Phone and Jio Phone 2, which drove global sales of feature phones in Q-1 and Q-2 of 2018. In Q-3 2018, Jio phone sales slowed down in India after the initial hype surrounding Jio phone of effectively free price tag. MEA emerged out to be the largest feature phone market owing to shipments growth rate of 32%.

Still wondering...How and why feature phones make a sizable and relevant market?

Affordability

There are still millions of low-income people in developing nations with basic phones. An upgrade from a basic phones to feature phone puts much smaller burden in pockets of these consumers as compared to an upgrade from feature phone to smartphone. Due to high purchase cost of smartphones, feature phones dominate smartphones in poor developing parts of the world. 

Ease of Usability

The problem with majority of old people is that they are very slow and reluctant in learning new things. Features phones have limited options, thereby making it much easier to learn to operate as compared to a smartphone. When compared to smartphones, one of the most compelling attributes of feature phones which makes it the best option for needs of old age people is big battery life.

A longer battery life is also particularly useful for people living in developing countries where a large population has no proper access to electricity and people are often dependent on charging stations.

4G Revolution

Just like smartphones, features phones are also now available with option of 4G connectivity. These 4G enabled feature phones are a compelling upgrade option for already existing feature phone users because they act as affordable option for these these low-income consumers to experience internet for the very first time. Partnership of Kai Os with feature phone OEM's has also brought several useful apps on these 4G feature phones like Whatsapp, Facebook, Youtube and Google assistant, which were smartphone exclusive some years ago.

         

BIGGEST TECH FLOPS OF 2018 !!!

Here is a list of some blunders in tech industry in 2018 that created quite a buzz among common people...

1. Windows 10 October Update

image source : https://www.techradar.com 

This has to be the biggest blunder of 2018 in terms of number of people it affected. Some users reported audio problems while others faced Blue Screen of Death. Update's adversity can be explained by fact that some users reported missing files from documents folder in C: Drive. This data loss issue was serious enough for Microsoft to stop update roll-out, only to resume it later on with another update to resolve issues. Considering the fact that more than 700 Million computer are running on Windows 10, how such a buggy update made it's way to computers worldwide? Microsoft should seriously make efforts to have robust testing procedures before public roll-out of any update.

2. The Red Hydrogen One

image source : https://www.planetofmobile.com/red-hydrogen-one/

This phone by Red Digital Cinema is a perfect example of how to screw up first product launch and create a negative brand image among people. Taking pre-orders with complete payment and then failing to release the product at the specified time-frame. Many product launch delays accumulated to around 14 months of delay in total. These delays are enough to kill the remaining excitement among audience and hype surrounding phone. A famous you-tuber SuperSaf even shared his bad experience when he failed to cancel his pre-order due to no-response from company. His video explaining the matter : RED Hydrogen One - My Preorder Experience. After the launch, there were more problems in final product than users would have liked. The biggest one of them was it's high price, close to $1300 which coupled with last-generation hardware specifications like 2017’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor made it even worse. Since Red is into making cinematography cameras, all the hype surrounding this device was around it's camera and display. The cameras turned out to be mediocre and holographic screen was cool gimmick. All in all, this product was a huge failure. 

3. Facebook Privacy Breaches

image source : https://www.theverge.com/

It came to public knowledge in March of 2018 that around 87 million people's data was leaked in a Facebook data breach. A company known as Global Science Research made Facebook application named "personality quiz" with purpose to collect user's data and sell it to another company named Cambridge Analytica, making it a clear violation of Facebook policies. This data was then used by Cambridge Analytica for social influencing efforts. In September, Facebook confirmed that as many as 30 million accounts had been hacked due to security issues.

BLACKBERRY KEY 2: WHERE IS THE KEY???

If you are unaware about Blackberry's comeback, here is a quick info-

After vanishing into thin air due to stiff competition from Android and iOS, Blackberry came to life when it entered into long-term brand licensing agreement with TCL Corporation and Optiemus Infracom. According to this hardware licensing partnership, Optiemus Infracom holds the right to produce Blackberry-branded smartphones in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nepal and Sri Lanka while TCL everywhere outside these nations.

Blackberry KeyOne release in early 2017 followed by Key2 in mid 2018 laid the foundation for comeback of Blackberry mobiles.

Source:- https://blackberrymobile.com/storage/2018/03/03-1.jpg

I grew up in years during which phones got from being big and practically non-portable to small, everyday and everywhere devices. This post is written by a guy who never got a chance to own and use a blackberry mobile phone until December of 2014. This was mainly due to two very practical reasons - first me being underage for phone usage during blackberry phone's glory days (yes this was a thing back then, now we have toddlers handling smartphones like a pro) and second one is somewhat even valid till nowadays i.e. their affordability.

Talking about pricing and affordability, BB KeyOne came with launch-price tag of $549 and Key2 with an increment of $100 to the previous one. Well at-first pricing seems to be kind of okay, considering the fact that both of these are blackberry's flagship devices, and even more when we have Samsung and Apple breaking $1000 price ceiling with their latest flagship pricing. Until you look at specs-sheet, which looks like that of a mid-grade phone rather than a flagship device and totally unacceptable for launch price tag of phone. We have devices with same internal hardware specifications, costing less than half the price.

Well at this point, one might argue that Blackberry has always been a software company with security at it's core values and has been providing those services with in-built features in their phones. So aren't they charging premium price for those services which make Key2 the most secure Android device available for masses to purchase. Yes, this can certainly be one of the explanations.

Blackberry's target consumers consist of people who really need high level of security provided by their devices and a small group of rich nostalgic tech-savvy people. This is the case because all other people not listed above are far better-off buying some other phone in same price segment like that of Oneplus.

Considering the fact that people who sincerely require that high end level of security are the one that can carry only one device and are rich enough to spend on security (top-officials). These people are generally willing to have excellent end user-experience, which is lacking in both KeyOne and Key2.

Blackberry can take advantage of it's unique position of being one of the very few companies to cater to such an audience, especially in Android domain. They can provide better overall experience by having the best in class hardware available in their upcoming devices and launch them with even a higher price-tag than it's predecessors.         

Increasing the launch price, can deter other people to make a purchase. This situation can be handled by having a more affordable option, which Blackberry tried to do by having another model named Key2 LE. With lower price-tag of $400, Blackberry Key2 LE still can't be called an affordable and certainly not a value-for-money option in emerging markets like India, where there are phones with excellent price to performance ratio in $200-$300 price range.

When Blackberry was in it's glory days, people did not buy blackberry just because of baked-in high level security features but due to simple fact that a blackberry phone was host of very well implemented smart features found during those days (especially that tactile physical keyboard and BBM). Unless Blackberry comes out with a compelling option, people will find it hard to buy and recommend a blackberry. While Blackberry's USP (unique selling point) i.e. in-built security features might not be as desirable among audience as compared to other brands. Blackberry can still make a comeback with offerings that are justifiable for their launch price. 

JIO PHONE 2 & JIO PHONE'S SUCCESS : STRATEGY EXPLAINED

Jio's Strategy and Success of Jio Phone 

Not just like any other feature phone launch, which goes unnoticed, the launch of Jio phone created quite a buzz across the globe. This was partly due to fact that it had handful of smart features but mostly due to it's effectively free price tag.

Jio phone plans

Before the launch of Jio phone , there was market base of more than 400 Million 2G subscribers in India. And as you might have guessed they were mostly on old feature handsets. Considering such a huge consumer base who would be happily willing to switch to 4G network, these potential users were let down by two factors -No such 4G enabled feature phone availability and high prices for 4G services which were definitely not affordable for people still on feature phone. 

If Jio would have just lowered down prices of plans for feature phone users, this would have let to a creation of demand for 4G enabled feature phone, only to be absorbed by players like Micromax, Intex and Nokia. It would have created another problem for Jio i.e. Users might have switched to some other telecom service provider like Airtel and Vodafone.

The aim of Jio was to lock down it's potential new users into Jio ecosystem as it will help them start a new stream of revenue. Launching Jio phone not only made Jio realize this goal but also absorb the demand that would have got created, just as previously done by launching Reliance Lyf brand of affordable smartphones at the time of launch of Jio internet services. 

And for those who think INR 1500 deposited in form of what Jio calls as security deposit is refundable after 3 years, there is clear mention that it is gonna happen only if Jio phone users get recharge done each and every month for 3 years. It is highly unlikely that anyone would be living with this hardware for so long.

So with a clear objective of capturing feature phone market share, Jio till now has been quite successful in it. As of July 2018, Jio phone had a market share of around 47% in Indian feature phones market. In the first quarter of 2018, Jio phone had global market share of around 15%. What's even more impressive is the fact that this feat of becoming global leader in feature phone market was achieved by Jio phone in just 10 months.

Jio Phone 2

Second generation Jio phone or as they call it Jio phone 2 can be seen as an iterative version of Jio phone. It comes with a few improvements and more importantly these improvements address some of the biggest problems of first generation Jio phone. 

Jio phone came with a standard T9 keyboard layout, which made providing any input to phone very cumbersome. Jio phone 2 improves on it by having a standard QWERTY layout for keyboard. This makes typing experience much better especially in apps like Whatsapp and Facebook.

Watching YouTube on Jio phone was never a fun experience. Thanks to Jio phone 2, the screen aspect ration has changed and now the screen is much wider making video watching experience much immersive.
Jio is asking you to hold them $43.69 (3000 INR) for a brand new Jio phone 2. 

Though Jio phone 2 provides some functional improvements over it's last model. It will not make much of a difference when it comes to overall experience as they have not improved on the most important aspect of a feature phone like Jio Phone i.e. voice input.

What people don't understand is that adding INR 2000 more can get them a decent Android smartphone like Nokia's Android One phone. I am not saying that it's gonna be lag free experience but still far better than what Jio phone 2 has to offer, especially considering the fact that target audience for Jio phone are feature phone users. 

JIOPHONE : REALLY A SMART FEATURE PHONE ??

By now it's high chance that you would have come across some article on internet or at-least a post on social media taking about Jio phone. For those who are still unfamiliar, it's somewhere between smartphone and a feature phone, you can call it a hybrid because it packs some features of a smartphone in body of a feature phone.

Jio phone

My experience

Keeping it straight and simple, this review comes from someone who gets all possible work done on a smartphone. So, as expected I was really annoyed by the fact there is no good voice input and you have to rely on that crappy keypad in many apps to do so.

Keypad on Jio phone

The keypad experience was worse than I expected. I had to press a key multiple times to register an input. To be sure that it is not a problem with my unit, I got my hands on another unit and still faced the same problem. It is quite unfortunate that Jio phone suffers from this issue cause it spoils the whole experience of navigating and interacting with device, though software was kind of okay. There were even times when I gave upon it's User Interface.

Cameras on this thing are perfect example of you get what you pay for. They are really very bad and what else one can expect from phone at this price point. I honestly think they should have provided a better front camera (for better video calls) at the expense of rear one cause anyway not even 20% of people are gonna use it for taking pics.

Two very strict requirements for decent video calls are that internet speed should be very good at your location (which is still a problem at many places) and you must be in very well lit environment.

Though Jio phone was released around an year ago in August of 2017, it is yet (as of when this post was published) to receive an update for WhatsApp and YouTube. As per company's announcement, it is expected to get these features starting from 15th August 2018. It might also get Google maps after YouTube. Other applications on Jio phone like Facebook and Jio apps work just fine when internet connectivity is good. As of now, voice input is limited to opening apps, making calls, sending messages and Google search on Google assistant.