As I’m a Chinese reporter based in India, many local taxi drivers would show me the Chinese-branded mobile phones that they are using. It is ordinary to see big ads with Indian celebrities endorsing Chinese mobile brands at airports, hotels, and even in remote rural areas. At the beginning of this year, I visited Bihar for an interview and found out that both sides of a street were occupied by ads of OPPO and VIVO, which impressed me deeply.
OPPO is reported to have received the permission from India to establish a factory in the country. It, therefore, becomes the fourth Chinese mobile brand that has its own factory in India, after VIVO, Xiaomi, and Huawei. China’s Xiaomi and Korea’s Samsung are currently the largest mobile phone brands in the Indian market, followed by Lenovo, VIVO and OPPO. Chinese brands have quickly got rid of the cheap tag since it entered the Indian market in 2014. The total sales volume accounts for more than a half of the mobile devices in the country, creating job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of Indian people.
Although the number of registered user has surpassed 900 million, the penetration of smart phone is below 20%, creating high demand for smart phones. And as Indian brands are not competitive enough, foreign companies have got the chance to divide the market. According to a mobile phone manufacturer, Chinese mobile brands are popular because they are cost-effective, localized, and closely attached with users.
The Narendra Modi government has set the value-added tax as low as 12% and tariff as 0 for locally-made mobile phones to encourage foreign companies to invest and set up factories in India. With the prosperity of Chinese brands in India, phones that are “made in India” by Chinese companies are due to receive warm acceptance.
(Yuan Jirong)