The Chinese Smartphone Invasion

Let us just travel back in time a little, 2005 maybe, around this time when one thought of buying a cell phone the choice was very simple specially for us in India the question rather was , which Nokia to buy? Now maybe you were a little geeky and tech savvy or you were running a business (or maybe you were very rich) you would have gone for a blackberry. Few years later, in 2007 to be very precise a company changed the idea of what a mobile phone was to us ,when a skinny man in a black round neck t shirt, loose jeans and a pair of sport shoes introduced the world to the iPhone. The term Smartphone became common knowledge and the iPhone catapulted the entire tech industry in a new era, the era of smart phones. Well there was no real competition until a certain search engine company (or our default homepage!!Any guesses?) thought of buying out a Linux based OS and then we were introduced to the green little bot we all have come to love ANDROID. Some say it was a rip off of IOS, maybe it was but it paid off. Now while all this was happening everybody wanted a Smartphone but not everyone could afford one. With these great features on smart phones they came with an even greater price. For a while companies who were still not on android (i am looking at you nokia) were still relevant but slowly they were losing ground.

Coming back to the topic, at the time ‘China phones’ here in India were gaining a little popularity. They were ridiculously cheap and loaded with features, they ripped off entire bodies of other branded phones but people did not care because they were cheap and functional. The only problem was the software was pathetic also there was no warranty or service centres available. Soon Samsung flooded the market with budget oriented android phones and well the rest is history. While these phones were termed as smart phones by many brands but any phone from a Samsung, Lg or Sony under a budget price was not really one. The screens used were pathetic, they lagged a lot, one could barely surf the internet but again they were termed as smart phones and were from a big brand. For a while this continued these giants were enjoying enormous profits because of their monopoly.

Than in early 2012 the Chinese struck back. Many of these companies until that point in time manufacturing phones for these very companies thought of introducing their own brand. They had the hardware and the software capability to do that. So companies like Gionee, Xiaomi, oppo, Lenovo, huawei and many more came up with their own phones. Well but what was so special that they could do to outweigh these giants, why would someone buy a xiaomi over a Samsung. Well they made sure we had enough reason to do it, they stuck with what they did best, and they started making phones which were unapologetically identical to the iPhones and the galaxies of the world. The phones looked the same, felt the same, android was given a complete overhaul to look like IOS and they offered it to the consumer at 1/3^rd or in some cases even 1/4^th the price. This time around they had a plan to stay, so they also started offering services, also instead of opening up any retail stores which required a lot of investment they partnered with various online e-commerce channels for distribution which was a stroke of genius to keep the cost low. And all this seems to be going really well, Xiaomi (which many people cannot even pronounce right, its ‘sha-om-i’ and not ‘za-om-i’) a company that is now referred as the ‘Apple of the east’ is now No.4 globally, recently in April xiaomi celebrated its 5^th birthday and set a new Guinness world record by selling a jaw dropping 2.11 million phones online under 24-hours. The company was valued at $10 billion in august 2013, as of December 2014 it was valued at a whopping $45 billion which gives all the competition a run for its money. Not just xiaomi, huawei apparently is next in line to manufacture the next nexus phone with Google. Lenovo has recently taken over Motorola mobility. Gionee and oppo seems to be doing good for themselves by introducing ridiculously slim phones at just 5.1mm. Need I say more?

In conclusion, well we have to understand something here what these companies have accomplished is truly incredible; the Giant gods of technology world are actually running scared. But what are we doing here in India? I think its high time Indian brands took themselves seriously and start to think big. India still is a huge market and we have the potential to pull a xiaomi out of our hat, which companies like YU televentures are trying to do. But still we have a long way to go before we are on the global map.