BEIJING: Chinese smartphone manufacturers have been flooding the Indian handset market with smartphone sales slowing down in China. Meizu, one of the top 10 smartphone brands in China, will soon be launching its product in India.
The company will have an official launch of its product in India on August 26. The company had earlier launched its M2 Note in India.
So far no details are available as to which products the company is expected to launch in India. With many websites such as Gizbot and Digit predicting that it may introduce its flagship product MX5 smartphone in India. Meizu MX5 was first announced in China in June this year.
Meizu is a big competition of China-based OnePlus. In India the entry of Meizu products will be keenly watched as the company’s price-points are very competitive along with latest features.
It is expected that MX5 pricing may be in sub-20,000 range. The smartphone is priced at Euro 260 (around 18,826), much lower than OnePlus’ recently launched OnePlus Two priced at around Rs 25,000.
MX5 comes with a 5.5 inches screen with an AMOLED captive touchscreen. It comes with a 20.7 MP camera and a 5MP front camera.
Chinese vendors have been flooding the Indian market with their products. According to the IDC’s quarterly mobile phone tracker report, Chinese vendors have tripled their shipments YoY in India and doubled quarter-on-quarter (QoQ). Lenovo, Xiaomi, Huawei and Gionee alone accounted for 12% of the total smartphone market in the second quarter, double from a year ago.
As China started to slow down, most vendors from the country have targeted India as the next big growth market for smartphones,”said Kiranjeet Kaur, Research Manager with IDC’s Asia/Pacific MobilePhone team.
The new entrants to the Indian market have utilized specific strategies to drive sales growth, according to Kiranjeet Kaur. “Key to the success of the Chinese vendors has been popular flash sales through online players such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. At the same time, they also focused on bringing more 4G phones at affordable $100-150 price points which is left unattended by Indian and global vendors”. Except for Lenovo, the top vendors in the second quarter still had majority of their shipments going through traditional channels.
