The smartphone arm of Samsung Electronics has “extremely aggressive plans” for India where it’s presently fending off the growing threat posed by Chinese original equipment manufacturers, most of all Xiaomi, its SVP Mohandeep Singh told the Indo-Asian News Service. While GfK is the only remaining industry tracker that’s relatively certain Samsung continued its leadership in India over the first quarter of the year, predicting the company seized nearly half of the market on its own, many other insight companies are now estimating Xiaomi to be surpassing the South Korean tech giant in terms of shipments to vendors.
Samsung remains the country’s most popular manufacturer of flagships, with only OnePlus and Xiaomi having some hope of challenging it for that title this summer, though the former has been growing its local presence in the mid-range and entry-level segments by a significant margin. Samsung already ended up being priced out of the non-premium mobile market in China where it presently accounts for less than one percentage point of annual shipments only half a decade after it was believed to be the leading OEM in the Far Eastern country, according to numerous industry trackers.
The company is now seeking to compete with the aggressive pricing strategy of Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, and other Chinese rivals operating in India with a lineup of redesigned entry-level and mid-range offerings being released as part of the Galaxy J and Galaxy A series, respectively. Compared to previous years when most such products from the firm featured a traditional aesthetic, Samsung is now working to have the Infinity Display-centric design language trickle down to its non-flagship devices. The most affordable Galaxy-branded devices with such 18.5:9 Super AMOLED panels now start at the equivalent of just over $200 in India. Samsung is also hoping to gain an advantage over its rivals by committing more resources to supporting the Make in India initiative so as to avoid having to incur extra costs on importing components and products into the country, though many of its Chinese competitors are presently pursuing similar plans.