Motorola Mobility has sold a whopping 1.6 million units of Smartphone since the company re-entered in India earlier this year. Flipkart – the exclusive sales partner of Motorola to sell all latest smartphones coming to India – has revealed the figure, though, didn’t provide any break-up of the sales numbers by the models. However, the Indian eCommerce giant went on quoting that among all the three Motorola smartphones – Moto E, Moto G and Moto X – currently available in the market, Moto E is the fastest selling smartphone, beating the rest with distinctive margin.
Motorola is expected to strengthen its presence in India with the latest launch of 2nd generation Moto G and Moto X. Both the smartphones from Motorola would be available on Flipkart exclusively, and farther one has no immediate plans to deploy any retail sales strategy to push its sales further. The new 2nd gen Moto G is already up for grab on Flipkart, while 2nd gen Moto X and smartwatch Moto 360 are expected to be available on Flipkart for sales by the end of the this month.
Online is the plan for now. Last year, India saw 88% increase in terms of e-commerce penetration. Internet penetration is currently 11%, so a lot of growth to come. Our partnership with Flipkart has been particularly exciting. said Marcus Frost – Sr. Markeing Director, Motorola.
The phenomenal growth of Motorola in India has helped the company to reclaim its grounds in the country. After the sales performance during the second quarter, Motorola has abased Nokia by replacing it in the list of Top 5 smartphone vendors in India Q2 , 2014.
But the market dynamics have been changing lately and Motorola may not enjoy the competition free ride this time as a Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi has already taken the entry level smartphone market in India by storm. The Chinese smartphone startup – also known as Apple of China – has introduced two new smartphones Xiaomi Mi3 and Redmi 1S tagged with jaw-dropping price, which is resulting in a huge demand for the Xiaomi devices week after week in spite of weekly sales of thousands of units. In 6 weeks since the launch, Xiaomi has sold nearly 135,000 units of Mi3 and Redmi 1S, combined.
Unlike Xiaomi, which puts only a few thousand units to grab every week, Motorola has planned to penetrate the market by importing 140,000 units of 2nd gen Moto G, up for grab in the first round of sales. The company has planned to beat the competition by fulfilling the estimated demand from the market in the first sales cycle itself.
Both Motorola and Xiaomi have apparently upped the ante to grab the biggest chunk of the entry-level smartphone market in India. India, now the third largest smartphone and the second largest mobile phone market in the world, has been witnessing an unprecedented growth in the smartphone segment for the last few quarters. In the first half of 2014, nearly 36 million smartphone devices were shipped. Interestingly, around 80% of these belonged to sub-$200 category, making the entry-level and mid-level segment the most lucrative market for smartphone vendors. Consequently, the country is witnessing a sudden rise in the number of smartphone vendors, including homegrown, that reached to 80 by the end of June this year.
While Motorola is trying to leverage on its extensive reach of more than 125 service centers now operational in India besides its global brand value, Xiaomi is focusing more on the price sensitivity aspect of the market. With the launch of 2nd generation Moto G and Moto X, Motorola is trying to grab the bigger chunk of the pie in India. If the company succeeds to recreate the magic with its latest smartphones, it could easily leapfrog closest competitors Lava and Karbonn in India to become the third largest smartphone vendors in India by the shipments during the third quarter, ending on September 31, 2014. Considering both the companies has put all of their eggs in the same sales-basket, known as Flipkart, it would be interesting to see the result of third-quarter shipments of smartphones, which could be full of surprises.
India reaching peak-smartphone-shippings
It only goes to show how deep is the Indian market for mobile smartphones.