Not so long ago, Micromax, an Indian smartphone maker, clinched the highest rank as the leading smartphone maker among in the country. It ran past Samsung Electronics, which had the top spot before Micromax. That being said, Micromax has not had a smooth ride lately. The market share has gone down, almost halved and new Chinese players are making an entry in the Indian market every quarter.
Previously Micromax had most of its device manufacturer by Chinese companies and later it was sold in India. But the scenario does seem to be the same as before. All top global brands have reduced the price of their offering, and the outsourced manufacturers have started to enter the Indian smartphone race with their brands.
By the end of 2015,several Chinese brands which made its way to India, have managed to double their market share here up to 18%, hitting on the market share of Indian players such as Micromax, Lava, Spice, Karbonn, Intex who had their market share fall from 48 to 43% in one year.
Top Chinese phone makers like Lenovo and Xiaomi and the newcomer LeEco have managed to grasp a heavy portion of the market share. They followed a strategy targeting the customers directly through e-commerce websites, saving the cost of retail distribution and advertisement, which lets them keep the cost of their devices lower than their competitors.
A report claims that by the end of 2015, shipment of Micromax devices fell from 15.4% to 12.1% .Micromax has said that it has plans to increase the local production in India, doubling the local manufacturing of devices up to 3 Million units per month by next one year. It also has a keen focus on the television market and has recently started manufacturing Air conditioners hoping for 5% revenue by the end of 2017.
Brands like Lenovo still continue to dominate Indian smartphone market. Its affordable offerings and the Moto lineup has helped the company to own 10% of the market share rising from just .6% in 2014. Many of the Chinese makers continue to harness the e-commerce sites to persuade the online customers, wooing them with offers and cash back, instead of focusing on the retail stores like the Indian smartphone makers do. Also, backed by humongous investments, Chinese firms such as Gionee and OPPO have spent around $100 Million only for advertising their products, targeting the retail outlet customers.
For Indian smartphone makers like Micromax, it is not going to be a straight road ahead. The would have to focus more on their offerings, like after sales support, affordable price tag, attractive features and quality of the product, to be able to compete with the mighty foreign and established players. There is going to be a transition from the smartphone era in the upcoming years, and they should be versatile to change their focus to the latest trend in technology, and not be lagging behind.
