Indian smartphone manufacturer Micromax is planning to enter the Chinese smartphone market next year, revealed Micromax co-founder Vikas Jain, while speaking at the Rise technology conference in Hong Kong.
Mr. Jain also hinted that that the company may go public in next two years to boost sales and raise cash for adding a range of services to its ecosystem.
Micromax is currently selling nearly a million smartphones a month. Apart from India, it is also operating in Russia – where it entered in early 2014 – and is now the third smartphone vendor in the country, with a market share of 5%. The company also sells its smartphones in countries like Nepal, Srilanka, and Bangladesh and is among top three vendors in all the three markets. By expanding to Chinese smartphone market, the company would have an opportunity to become one of the top five smartphone vendors worldwide. Currently, China’s Vivo, is the fifth-largest smartphone maker worldwide – selling over four million phones a month, according to International Data Corp.
According to WSJ, the market share of the company in India has dwindled recently after facing tough competition from Samsung, homegrown brands, and Chinese vendors, which are offering handsets with better specifications at lower prices. The market share of Chinese manufacturer in India has seen a rise from 9% to 18% in a year, while, the market share of Micromax dropped drastically from 15.4 to 12.1% in Q4 2015. Experts believe that might have forced company to think about entering a new market. Recently, the company revamped its logo to come up with a new identity.
According to Jain, Micromax is working hard to become the fifth largest smartphone manufacturer in the world in terms of units sold by 2020.
“Micromax plans to raise money in the next two years from private investors or by going public,” the WSJ report says.
In recent years, even Chinese brands have been looking for opportunities to enter new markets to stay ahead of their competitors. Interestingly, Micromax also gets its smartphones manufactured by Chinese OEM’s, and a few models are just rebranded. In China, Apple and Samsung are getting tough competition from Chinese brands, and while these brands are struggling in China, experts believe, Micromax’s entry in Chinese market will is not going to be as smooth as in other foreign countries. It will be interesting to see, in 2017, how Micromax will compete against the Chinese manufacturers in their domestic market.
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