Flood Of Budgetary Smart-phones To Tap Emerging Markets In India

For an individual residing in a semi urban or rural part of the country buying a quality smart device at a hefty price tag of INR 25-30,000 was a distant dream (atleast in most cases) the pricing issue of the smart devices was the primary reason according to experts for a snail pace growth of smart-phone penetration in tier 3 cities and rural parts of India.

But gone are the days when people belonging from the non metros had to rely on feature phones only as the market is now flooding with budgetary smart-phones costing as low as INR 6,000 and offering a decent set of features.

The recent launch of the Zenfone series by Asus is one such example where a smart device is available at a starting price of INR 5,999 without comprising with the quality of features. The Zenfone launch by Asus came days after Motorola launch its MotoG handset aimed at midrange smart-phone aspirants at a price tag of about INR 12,000.

Players like Gionee are already in the arena of budgetary smart offerings with most of its devices lieing within the range of INR 10-15,000. Xiaomi, a Chinese smart-phone maker too is all set to stiff the competition in the segment with the launch of its Mi3 offering at a price of INR 13,999 whose features according to the company and industry experts are comparable to that of a flagship phone by other leading smart-phone manufacturers in India.

India is the third largest smart-phone market after China and US with nearly and according to IDC the number of smart-phone shipments are expected to touch the mark of 80.57 million units by the end of the year 2014.

The growth cycle of-course has to come from the rural section of the society which is largely untapped from the smart-phone potential and with the continous launch of affordable quality smart devices in the country the day is not far when we will see a big screen multipurpose quality device in hands of every individual of the country even in far flung areas.

Throwing some light on the flipside of the trend then its the domestic handset manufacturers who will be at the biggest loss as till now they were banking on their cheap offerings with features which did not matched with that of premium offerings from smart-phone veterans, not even a bit and they will have to rethink on there strategies to prevent losing of their customer base+-