It should be kept in mind that the under INR 10,000 to INR 15000 market had become rather interesting with the entry of Chinese vendors in the budget segment. In the beginning the Chinese companies concentrated on introducing budget devices with better features. However soon, the trend was seen changing. The companies started increasing the cost of the devices to more than INR 20,000. Yet the product received was worth the amount spent. In this manner the premium market is on the path of being destroyed by some popular device makers. This is happening much faster than estimated. Faisal Kawoosa, the Lead Analyst of Telecoms at CMR said, after successfully rippling the low and entry-level smart phone market, the high-end smart phone market will be now shaken by the emerging brands, in a new CMR study via PTI about premium market space in India.
The report states that in 2015 Apple held the top position with 44 percent followed by Samsung with 23 percent. It was observed that other high-end phone makers like Sony and HTC slipped by 8.3 and 7.6 percent. OnePlus which is a new competitor made a grand entry into the top 5, and it is expected that others like Huawei, Vivo, and Gionee will reach the top position soon. The IDC report pointed at the growth of companies like Oppo and Vivo, while in India in terms of market share, Xiaomi had managed to exceed Apple and Samsung even though for a short period between October 2014 to December 2014. This points out how people’s attitude are changing towards Chinese brands, it also shows the change in people’s trust factor and the fact that people are ready to spend huge sum of money for these brands shows change in value.
In the high-end segment, only 19 shipped devices out of a total of 164 brands. The Chinese company Xiaomi that started off with devices costing less than INR 7000 to INR 12,000 but now the company has come out with Mi 5 that features a higher price around INR 25,000, similarly the OnePlus 3 also sports a price tag that is much higher than its earlier models. The report also says that about 70 percent of users instead of simply looking for a device in the same price range will opt for an upgrade to a high-end smart phone. As per the CMR report this year it will result into a jump by 19 percent. Kawoosa said the high-end smart phone market is expected to grow 19% in 2016 as against 15% in the previous year.
