Xiaomi, the largest smartphone seller in the Indian market plans to take on Samsung, the second largest player through offline stores. Both the companies control more than half of the Indian smartphone market with Xiaomi accounting for 28 percent and Samsung 24 percent. However, since the company Xiaomi entered in the smartphone market it has kept the sales and marketing exclusively online for long. This helped the company to snatch the urban market from Samsung but the rural market is still dominated by the South Korean consumer electronics giant. Given the fact the urban smartphone market is saturating, major demand will come from rural areas.
India is the second largest smartphone market in the world after China. The major players are Xiaomi (28 percent), Samsung (24 per cent), Vivo (10 per cent), Oppo (8 per cent) and Micromax (5 per cent). In 2018, the smartphone market grew by 19 percent in terms of revenue and 10 percent by shipment units. Samsung has maintained the leadership in the Indian market for almost a decade but it was toppled by the Chinese manufacturing giant- Xiaomi. The company plans to maintain its leadership through huge investment in expanding its ‘offline presence’. “We are hoping to continue to be number 1 in India… we want to grow our offline share this year…we have 50% online market share, and holding it is a tough task, thereby offline expansion is a focus area for Xiaomi this year,” said Xiaomi India managing director Manu Kumar Jain.
The company is targeting 50 percent sales through offline market from against 40 percent in the previous year. There are 6,000 retail stores and the company plans to expand the tally to 10,000 by the end of this year.
The smartphone manufacturing companies had set up units in India after the Modi government came to power. The Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn which assembles iPhones will start the mass production of iPhones in India from this year. For decades, iPhones has been assembled in China, the global manufacturing hub. PM Modi has invited Foxconn to manufacture the premier smartphones in India. The company already manufactures smartphone units Xiaomi and Nokia at the assembly units located in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu.
In July 2018, Samsung opened world’s biggest handset manufacturing company in Noida, Uttar Pradesh to produce 120 million phones per year.“In 2017-18, over 225 million handsets were assembled/manufactured in India, which was roughly 80% of the total market requirement,” said the India Cellular & Electronics Association (ICEA) in a report.
In December last year, Chinese smartphone giant, Vivo is all set to establish its second manufacturing facility in India with an investment of Rs 4,000 crore in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Vivo is one of the largest smartphone companies in the world with 2 plants in China, 1 in India and 1 in Indonesia. This will be the fifth manufacturing facility of Vivo and now production in India will rival to that in China.
India saved 3 lakh crore rupees through smartphone manufacturing. India has overtaken the United States of America to become the 2nd largest manufacturer of smartphones in the world, trailing China. Make in India has turned the tide in India’s favor making India a global hub for manufacturing which is the principal aim of the ‘Make in India’ Policy. In 2014, there were only 2 manufacturing units in India but since the launch of ‘Made in India’ which propelled the scene in an impressive manner, the number has increased to 123 units in 2017.
