Maxx Mobile has launched a basic feature phone named Maxx Leader
MX100, the phone comes with a mammoth 4,400mAH battery. It’s a giant
battery for a device with basic features and promises to keep the device
on for 3-4 days. Maxx claims that the battery on this device can also
be used as a power bank to charge other phones.
With this feature phone the company is aiming the rural audience who
would prefer feature phones over smartphones. In our previous article we
took you through the growth of smartphones which ultimately resulted with a downfall of the feature phone market.
Krishna Singh who is the COO of Maxx Mobiles said that the current
mobile phone accessibility in rual parts of India is less than 40
percent and with this mobile phone the company is aiming to provide all
the features necessary in a phone at a budget price of Rs 1,932.
The company also claims that the exterior of the phone is built to
protect it from Dust and water damages to some extent; the phone is not
100% water proof but can take a quick dip in water and still function
without damages. Maxx Leader MX 100 comes with a built-in LED torch,
Dual SIM slots, Digital Camera and Bluetooth. Multimedia features of
this phone stand decent with MP3/MP4 player along with FM player. The
device accepts micro SD memory cards up to 16GB.
Agreeing on the point made by Maxx Mobiles we can expect growth for
feature phones in the rural parts of India where people prefer feature
phones over Android touch screen phones.
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Indian
consumers always have liking towards cost efficient products or rather
call them affordable products. Anything that is affordable to Indian
consumer, he will buy it, he might not use it later or criticize it for
being less durable or something like that. But that’s not the point here
anyway; here we are going to talk about the changing trend in the
mobile phone market in India.
What is it that brings a lot of concern in the Indian mobile phone
industry? Do we even call it a mobile phone industry? No! Not really, as
we popularly call it the “Smartphone Industry” these days, and that’s
exactly is what is making the low end feature phones suffer. Because a
phone is no more a phone, it has become a smartphone, it needs to play
music, movies, games and most importantly shoot good photos.
Image courtesy DAZINFO
Lets
go through a recent report from IDC on the changing trend of
smartphones in India. According to this report Indian smartphone market
has grown very rapidly, but this growth has negatively impacted the
feature phone sales. Smartphones in India has seen 229% growth
year-over-year while feature phones take a dip by 81%.
The report further revealed that Micromax has seen exceptional growth
in last one year. Micromax last year stood with 6.3% share in the
market which currently has increased to 22%. With this Micromax has
become 2nd largest phone supplier in India. Samsung shares
about 33% stake in the market while Karbonn is slowly climbing with 13%
share.
One can talk a lot about this shift from phones to smartphones, but
what made smartphones so viral in India? Why is that we see smartphones
at every corner of the country? Why don’t we see those old style feature
phones anymore? And there is only one answer to all these questions; it
is the Affordability and Availability of Android phones. That’s right
one might think smartphones are costly and not everyone would buy it,
but that’s not the scenario anymore. We have Micromax, Samsung, LG,
Karbonn, Lemon, Lava, Xolo, Gionee and a whole bunch of companies who
offer you a smartphones for as low as Rs 3,500. These brands also offer
premium smartphones contending in the high price range.
These smartphone makers in India are offering a phone for every age
group and in every price range while giving buyers unique set of
features which otherwise are not available on the feature phones.
Moreover Android phones come with beautiful designs and useful
accessories. We use smartphones while we travel in train and bus, we use
them under the desk in college, we use them to check email, we use
smartphones to get directions, book movies what not. Smartphones have
become a part of our life- for some it is like a body part and that they
cant do without their smartphones. Feature phones did not come with a
lot of features and were majorly used for making calls and sending
texts.
According to Kiran Kumar, currently appointed as
Research manager at IDC, the shift took place as the line between the
prices of smartphones and feature phone became thinner. Given the low
price structure of Android devices customers have changed there
preference to Android phones from feature phones.
Lets go through some of the cheapest devices in the Indian market
Karbonn A1 Plus- Rs 3,390
Micromax Bolt A26- Rs 3,406
Micromax Bolt A62- Rs 3,625
Micromax Bolt A35- Rs 3,690
iBall Andi 3.5r- Rs 2,999
