It appears no major smartphone manufacturers miss large India market which provide great opportunity from entry-level to high-end mobile devices. Two days ago Panasonic entered India market with its P51 smartphone and today it was the turn of Chinese telecom major ZTE, which announced a tie-up with Pune based firm Calyx Telecommunications to launch its smartphones in the domestic market.
Announcing the tie-up, Xu Dejun, chief executive officer, ZTE India, said “Globally, ZTE is the fourth largest handset manufacturer and we are certain to strengthen our position in India, which is a key growth propeller for us, contributing to 10 per cent of our overall revenues.”
As per terms of the partnership, ZTE India will handle post-sales services while Calyx, which is a real estate playre, will be responsible for distribution, sales and marketing of ZTE smartphones and tablets. ZTE plans to introduce smartphones priced at between Rs 5,799 to Rs 14,999, as well as its range of tablet PCs in India, while it is yet to finalise the pricing of its tablets.
ZTE, which supplies handsets to Indian handset-makers such as Micromax and Karbonn and telecom operators Reliance Communicationsand Idea Cellular, has set a target of selling one million smartphones in the first year.
“With our foray into the open handset market in India, we want to become a dominant player here and be among the top 3 in the next three years,” ZTE India CEO XuDejun said.The first wave of ZTE smartphones and tablets will be shipped into India from its factories in China, but in the near future the company plans to manufacture them locally. “We look forward to manufacturing the smartphones and tablets at our Gurgaon factory in future,” added Dejun.
“We will initially focus on five states — Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh andChhattisgarh. ZTE devices will be available pan-India by October,” Calyx Telecommunications executive director Gaurav Somani said. He added that the company will invest about Rs 500 crore in getting the inventory, marketing and distribution of ZTE products.
Now, all the major Chinese handsets makers like Huawei,ZTE and Gionee, have set their eyes on India and in the coming months, these companies will give tough competition to domestic companies like Micromax and Karbonn, and to some extent to entry-level devices of big brands like Samsung,Sony etc. In the coming days, Huawei is also going to become very aggressive as they have ambitious plans to sell around 60 million smartphones in the next twelve months and they would also focus much of their energies on India market.
