Please note that this post/text is hypothetical, please do not think otherwise
Not too long ago, Micromax, Karbonn and other Indian smart phone brands were ruling in the Indian smart phone market. I remember the launch of Micromax Canvas and most if not everybody were jumping to get one. It was the first or at least the early adopter of 5 inch display when nearly all other brands even international brands like Samsumg and iPhone were stuck in the 4 inch sizes.
One of my close friend even traded his Samsung Galaxy for the Micromax Canvas. Now, I know that the build quality, the camera performance, etc was not up to the mark, but the bigger screen size was the craze then.
And, not only Micromax, even Karbonn and other Indian brands had a decent portfolio of smart phones.
But now these brands are not even talked about at least in the major cities in India. They may still have some followers and buyers in smaller cities, but these brands have been wiped clean from the major cities. Why has this happened and that too in such a few year's time.
For one, I think (I may be wrong) these brands did not manufacture/assemble the devices in India, but just re tagged some Chinese smart phone brands. In particular, I think the designs of Micromax smart phones and a particular Chinese brand which is now available directly in India, were too similar.
Other reasons would be the very low innovation and very low to nil manufacturing ability of these Indian brands. And, the most important reason is the introduction of Chinese brands directly in India.
Now, we get Xiaomi, Vivo, LeEco, Huawei, Coolpad, Oppo, and more Chinese brand smart phones directly without the middle men that used to peddle these as Indian branded smart phones (Again, this may be wrong.)
For example, take the latest basic smart phone of the Xiaomi Redmi brand, the Redmi 3s Prime. It is priced at INR 8,999 and has a 5 inch screen, a Fingerprint scanner, 13 MP back camera, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB Internal Memory, 4100 mAh battery, 5 MP front camera, 1280 x 720 pixels screen, FM radio, Infrared port, sensors: accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass. So basically you get all the most important features that is required in a smart phone.
Now lets see what competition this smart phone has got from the Indian brands. From the gsmarena website, I have selected the Indian brands: Celkon, Intex, Karbonn, Lava, Micromax, XOLO and YU. Lets see what we get for the 2016 smart phone models with similar specifications of Redmi 3s Prime.
The criteria that I selected: Year 2016, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB Internal Memory, 5 inch Size, 8 MP Primary camera, 2 MP secondary camera, Fingerprint scanner, Battery Capacity of at least 3100 mAh.
The results are:
Not too long ago, Micromax, Karbonn and other Indian smart phone brands were ruling in the Indian smart phone market. I remember the launch of Micromax Canvas and most if not everybody were jumping to get one. It was the first or at least the early adopter of 5 inch display when nearly all other brands even international brands like Samsumg and iPhone were stuck in the 4 inch sizes.
One of my close friend even traded his Samsung Galaxy for the Micromax Canvas. Now, I know that the build quality, the camera performance, etc was not up to the mark, but the bigger screen size was the craze then.
And, not only Micromax, even Karbonn and other Indian brands had a decent portfolio of smart phones.
But now these brands are not even talked about at least in the major cities in India. They may still have some followers and buyers in smaller cities, but these brands have been wiped clean from the major cities. Why has this happened and that too in such a few year's time.
For one, I think (I may be wrong) these brands did not manufacture/assemble the devices in India, but just re tagged some Chinese smart phone brands. In particular, I think the designs of Micromax smart phones and a particular Chinese brand which is now available directly in India, were too similar.
Other reasons would be the very low innovation and very low to nil manufacturing ability of these Indian brands. And, the most important reason is the introduction of Chinese brands directly in India.
Now, we get Xiaomi, Vivo, LeEco, Huawei, Coolpad, Oppo, and more Chinese brand smart phones directly without the middle men that used to peddle these as Indian branded smart phones (Again, this may be wrong.)
For example, take the latest basic smart phone of the Xiaomi Redmi brand, the Redmi 3s Prime. It is priced at INR 8,999 and has a 5 inch screen, a Fingerprint scanner, 13 MP back camera, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB Internal Memory, 4100 mAh battery, 5 MP front camera, 1280 x 720 pixels screen, FM radio, Infrared port, sensors: accelerometer, gyro, proximity, compass. So basically you get all the most important features that is required in a smart phone.
Now lets see what competition this smart phone has got from the Indian brands. From the gsmarena website, I have selected the Indian brands: Celkon, Intex, Karbonn, Lava, Micromax, XOLO and YU. Lets see what we get for the 2016 smart phone models with similar specifications of Redmi 3s Prime.
The criteria that I selected: Year 2016, 2 GB RAM, 16 GB Internal Memory, 5 inch Size, 8 MP Primary camera, 2 MP secondary camera, Fingerprint scanner, Battery Capacity of at least 3100 mAh.
The results are:
- YU Yureka Note
- YU Yunicorn
- Micromax Canvas Unite 4 Pro
Only three and that too of just the Micromax and its subsidiary YU brand. And if we raise the RAM requirement to 3 GB and Internal Memory to 32 GB we get just one result, the YU Yunicorn.
But what about the price. Well from the Amazon India website, the price for YU Yunicorn is INR 12,600 and as stated above the Redmi 3s costs INR 8,999.
How is this possible, that an Indian brand cannot compete with a Chinese brand which I think would also have to pay some Excise duty and may be other Indian Government taxes and still give more bang for the buck. Something just does not fit. Something is really broken in the Indian brands which needs fixing and fixing up fast. Otherwise, there would not be even a single competing device left from the Indian brands.
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