The festive sales period of online marketplaces – Amazon and Flipkart – offers a lot of good options to consider and at the same time try out something new.
The R brands of Redmi and Realme have ruled to roost for several years in the affordable segments. The great choices they have been able to put forth before consumers at very aggressive pricing made them customers’ favourites. Both brands, especially Redmi has a significant contribution in making 4G popular across the country. In the smartphone space it very efficiently complimented Jio’s 4G launch and soon we saw India achieving milestone after milestone in the 4G journey.
In 5G also these brands have been playing their role of taking it to masses, though they have at the same time got carried by the so called ‘premiumisation’ wave. Whatever the case, I am expecting these brands to return to their ‘roots’ and focus more on driving affordability in the market.
The affordability is driven by android powered smartphones. Consumers wanting to buy a 5G smartphone in sub ₹20,000 segment also deserve to try out something new and experience newer brands. So far, they have been restricted to choose among R-brands besides others that have multi-segment approach like Samsung, Oppo and Vivo.
But this festive season if you want to be a bit bold you can try out some different brands, which can be clubbed in ‘rising brands’ as these are relatively new to the market, have single digit market share by volume and somewhere have limited visibility and awareness among the affordable segments. However, this doesn’t mean that these are not making good smartphones. There is hardly any parameter on which they will not stand in comparison with the ‘leader’ brands.
As we go live with the online festive sales period, I list down some of the brands that you can try out as customers. I have been experiencing their devices for some time now and I have seen them making great efforts to improve their offerings that include product improvements, increasing their retail points of sale, widening the servicing network as well as reasonably pricing their products. I don’t want to call out any specific brand or model to recommend, but in many cases I can very confidently say that they are offering a better proposition than the alternative options available from the established brands. So, as consumers while you go for your planned purchase of a smartphone triggered by several factors including upgrading to 5G, upgrading for better specifications, upgrading for new looks and design, or any other reason that makes you purchase a new smartphone; you can also surprise yourselves by trying out a smartphone from these ‘rising’ brands that will give you an element of newness in terms of interface, some more features to try out and a reason to stand out of the crowd.
Motorola – Though the cellular phone story began with Motorola, it has seen several ups and downs through its journey so far. The Motorola we see today is a new brand in many ways. After it got acquired by Lenovo, the confusing line-up peaked as both Lenovo and Motorola brands were operating in the market and there was a strong overlap between some portion of the lineup.
After it was decided to have single brand of Motorola operating in the market, we saw this brand rising fast. Not only did the brand helped the ecosystem with clarity in the product line, but Motorola also did substantial improvements in its products. Over the past few years, it has attempted to improve in all weak areas like camera, UI, among others. In the sub ₹20,000 band, it has G and E series smartphones offering good experience along with a newness that can help users to get away from the boredom of R brands.
Lava – This is one Indian brand that has been tirelessly attempting to stay relevant and keep India’s hopes alive in the smartphone market. Lava also did a lot of overhauls of its strategy. Today Lava is present online, has very defined lineup under different series catering to the aspirational youth of the country in metros as well as non-metro regions. Earlier Lava attempted to leverage the patriotic positioning by communicating it being the only Indian brand, which gave it limited success. But now Lava has made significant improvements in its products, and they are nowhere behind their Chinese counterparts. Now Lava has gone step ahead and started to introduce several features first time in the segments its present in.
Infinix – This brand has all the potential of becoming a well-recognised brand in the market. Its hardware is very good and attempts to maximise value for the customers by way of offering top-notch specifications in the segments it operated in. UI is a bit troublesome at times, but in experience its as good as the UI of other brands, especially R brands. To address this, it was again the first brand in the segment to minimize the bloatware to improve the experience of the customers. This brand is low in awareness and presence. If it works on these aspects, its product will fetch it more customers owing to the hardware feel and specifications it offers.
Tecno – Another very promising brand to explore to avoid the R-brands’ boredom. Very similar to Infinix, however, I see the Tecno UI relatively better than Infinix. Also, Tecno puts in a lot more efforts on the aesthetics and exteriors of the phone, offering more choice to consumers who are looking to buy style statements in the affordability segments. Tecno did some not so productive things in the recent times like massively advertising to increase its visibility, alignment of the brand with fashion and style, etc., which in my opinion did not yield proportionate results. But, for consumers looking to try out something different during the present festive sales period, this brand can be definitely considered to experience something new.
Nothing – It has interesting elements both in design and experience to offer and give altogether a new feel to customers who have been experiencing other android smartphones including those of R-brands. Among the present-day smartphone brands, Nothing single’s out in attempts to offer a refreshed software experience to the consumers. Earlier, though the focus was above ₹30,000, but it has now been introducing models lower than this threshold. In under ₹20,000 it has CMF as a sub-brand which is trying to bring a lot of choice and options for the teenagers joining the smartphone journey with affordable segment.
Besides these there are also options like iQoo and Poco, but they have a lot of elements of their parent brands Vivo and Redmi respectively. So, the customers might not see anything very refreshing. The bottom-line is that consumers need not to worry about these ‘rising’ brands and can definitely rely on them in this festive season. There will be gaps still in their overall offering like some hiccups with servicing, etc., but if we look at industry norms, they are in line with any major brand. Its mostly a perception we believe in that their after sale is not at par with that of the established brands. The failure rates are almost similar for all the brands – established as well as rising.
As they say, to expect higher returns one needs to take greater risks. So, this festive season, be a bit daring and take the risk of owning a smartphone from these rising brands. You won’t regret the decision and at the same time get rid of the R-brands’ boredom.
