Chinese electronic major iVOOMi on Tuesday marked its entry in India with launch of two affordable smartphones Me 1 priced at Rs 3,999 onwards. The handset will be available in two versions—Me 1 and Me 1+ (Rs 4,999). The devices will be available online on ShopClues from April 25 midnight.
Ashwin Bhandari, CEO, iVOOMi, India told that the company is rolling out 50,000 smartphones as its first batch for this week, which are manufactured in India. “We are currently manufacturing phones in the country with our partner Foxconn, but we will manufacture handsets in our own manufacturing unit by mid of 2018,” he added.
Joining its Chinese peers such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Itel, and Gionee, another Chinese electronic player iVoomi has said that it will manufacture smartphones in India, and is investing $50 million (approx Rs 300 crore) to setup its manufacturing unit and R&D facility in India.
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Bradley Yan, Global Business Head, iVoomi told FE that the company is in the evaluation phase about the location of its manufacturing unit, and would be finalising the same by August this year. He further added that the factory’s will have capacity of 5 million devices a year, and will manufacture all of its models in India. Regarding its setup in India, Yan told that iVoomi will aboard close 150 employees in India by end of 2017.
Tarun Pathak, senior analyst of Counterpoint Research says that for any new player entering India now will not only need deep pockets but also deeper understanding of the market to cater to new as well as mature smartphone users.
According to reports, India has attracted investment from 37 mobile manufacturing companies in last one year, including likes of Xiaomi, Vivo, Gionee, Jivi, itel- to name a few. Currently, Chinese mobile handset companies in India comprise close to 46% market share as on March, 2017.
“Tweaking product portfolio as per needs and preferences of end user, and tight control on supply chain ecosystem apart from multi-channel strategies is required to survive in this market. In such a scenario iVoomi needs to tick mark in most of these boxes to scale up its operations in India,” he added.
iVoomi said that it is focusing on Tier 2 and Tier 3 segments in India, and is targeting 3-4% market share by mid-2018.
According to research firm IDC, Samsung dominated Indian mobile handset market with 25.1% market share in Q4, 2016 followed by Xiaomi 10.7%, Lenovo 9.9%, Oppo 8.6% and Vivo 7.6%.
