The wave of convergence of IT Telecom and Electronics is being felt quite strongly in India. Responding to the current trend, branded Cellphone manufacturers are gearing up apace.
High-end cell phones, which are now being launched in the Indian market, are nothing but handheld PCs, with a few limitations. Also, many such devices can be used as a camera.
Who are the buyers, and what are they picking up? Businessmen, corporate managers and executives are preferring Internet enabled cell phones, as those let them work on the go. Whereas young buyers and students are leaning mostly towards multimedia or media entertainment provider sets. Of course both of those are towards high-end.
Low, middle-end cellphones are mostly going through mobile service providers’ integrated packages. Still those have a good demand, often as a replacement product.
Mobile TV entertainment is on the card. Although, this is yet to attract people in mass scale, TV-enabled handsets’ market is also growing.
Branded product manufacturers, although providing good warranty and servicing facilities, are still facing competition from the unbranded products, owing to their high price. In some cases, an unbranded handset, with similar facilities like a branded one, costs 2.5 times less.
Young people often change their handset models to keep track with the fast-changing life style. Thus, they are not very much worried about warranty and service issues. They are picking up unbranded products like hot cakes. Resellers, who sell only branded products, are losing a great chunk of market this way.
The branded cell phone vendors are supposed to work out strategies to hold these buyers. One best way is to focus on priority-based models at low price. Not that – it has not been thought of, still the thought has not been translated into action as per the Indian income level.
While rural communication is going to see a facelift altogether, mobile vendors will definitely find a huge market in the coming days, thus this is the right time to think of the economy of scale, considering the forthcoming huge demand. They have to reduce price of the high-end products, sell will automatically grow.