Will Chip-Makers Bring Cheer to Domestic Handset Makers?

#News(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Compared to Qualcomm or MediaTek this Chinese fabless company formerly known as Spreadtrum, is not a very well-known name in India though the company has been providing chips to a number of Indian manufacturers like Samsung and Reliance as well as a few local handset manufacturers. Moreover, there was an earlier Strategy Analytics report which stated Spreadtrum lost market share in 2017 because it didn’t accelerate its LTE product roadmap through innovation.
But now, with Reliance Jio’s successful run rate of notching 250 million subscribers within two years and a Credit Suisse report which estimated that the total number of JioPhones sold so far could be close to around 40 million, Unisoc has every reason to be bullish about India.
The Credit Suisse survey on the Indian telecom sector said that as suggested by recent media reports, the JioPhone model had 36 per cent share of the feature phone market for January-March quarter of 2018 on an expanded market base. “This implies JioPhone sales would be around 21 million for the quarter or roughly 7 million per month,” the survey said.
MediaTek, on the other hand, has been empowering domestic handset manufacturers such as Micromax, Intex, Karbonn, etc with its processors for a few years now and is well-entrenched in the market.
But for Qualcomm it has been a bumpy ride as far as domestic handset manufacturers were concerned. While India has been primarily a 2G and 2.5G and 3G market, Qualcomm couldn’t really fit in because it has been primarily a 4G company for the last 5-6 years. Now that India has shifted quite quickly to a 4G LTE environment, there are offerings that Qualcomm could bring to the table of domestic manufacturers and ensure that its growth trajectory remains positive.
Unfortunately, Indian handset vendors underestimated Chinese companies and lost a significant market share to players like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo in the last few years due to lack of focus on R&D as well as poor marketing strategies – both offline and online.

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