There are so many factors that drive smartphone demand in India. Some may be more important than others, but the smartphone market, pandemic notwithstanding, has seen steady growth in India, at times more than any other country’s smartphone market. This growth rises in leaps and bounds during festive seasons like New year and Republic Day, as gifts are exchanged.
Primarily, elevated demand is noticed at traditional festivals, especially Diwali, Holi, and others. Throughout the year, of course, you can always find crowds buying smartphones as phones are becoming more affordable with each passing season.
You can buy phones under 20,000 INR with some features that high-end phones offer. It has become easy to upgrade to new, smart, and sophisticated phones, as they are readily available to the savvy Indian smartphone consumer.
Understanding the Indian Smartphone User
India is a young country in terms of its population. With more exposure to the internet, and with education playing an important role in the country’s advancement, the youth seek to empower themselves and better their lives. As a developing country with multitudes of economically deprived youth, working towards betterment and growth, smartphone demand has increased.
This is especially true for budget and mid-range phones. Budget and mid-range phones may not offer the highest RAM, such as in 8GB RAM mobiles, but they do offer appealing specs and hi-tech features that facilitate regular smartphone use.
Due to the affordability of these phones, you will discover that smartphones exist in the far corners of rural India, not just in cities. With job markets opening up and more global corporations and start-ups evolving in India, people from economically strained households can afford budget smartphones.
Budget and Mid-range Phones
Besides the economically-challenged strata of society, the average working-class Indian also has demanded smartphones that give them value for money. The mentality of Indians is always to find value in their purchase. Consequently, many a time, whether affordability is a factor or not, the Indian consumer will likely want a smartphone with more features and specs but wishes to pay less. Indians want to have their cake and eat it too. This is possible, now that many inexpensive and durable smartphone brands have entered the Indian market.
Chinese brands came into India with a bang, and have been the driving force of Indians purchasing phones. Phones under 20,000 INR are available aplenty, with specs that please the average Indian consumer, who is fully satisfied with 6GB of RAM rather than an 8GB RAM mobile, and a powerful battery of 4000 to 5000mAh.
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Furthermore, smartphones in this price segment come with great Snapdragon chipsets that promise performance. Indians also love great cameras in their phones, and this need is met with phones with quad-rear camera configurations in the mid-range segment. As if all this wasn’t enough to boost demand, many Indian consumers rush to buy mid-range phones as a second phone. They may already have a flagship phone which acts as their main phone.
Phones for the Kids
Let alone adults, smartphone demand in India has spiked as parents scurry to buy their children's phones. This purchasing behavior isn’t just recently due to the pandemic (though it has become enhanced as a result of e-learning and new use cases), but has escalated in the past few years as exposure and peer pressure have led many parents to give children phones.
Parents also think a smartphone ensures a certain amount of safety for their children, as there are smartphone apps that trace children’s locations. The demand for mid-range smartphones that offer enough in terms of children’s use has propelled widespread buying behavior in parents.
Offers and Discounts
The demand for smartphones is always on the upswing, with the Indian consumer drawn to regular offers by e-commerce companies like Amazon and Flipkart. As COVID-19 enforced lockdown, the smartphone demand decreased significantly as people were preoccupied with the onslaught of a pandemic. Also, there was a global economic crisis and production units were closed indefinitely.
Nonetheless, in June 2020, three months or so after the lockdown began, smartphone markets showed recovery signs with people wanting basic phones, not 8GB RAM mobiles, but even 4GB models. This started mainly as a response to the new e-learning setup, but now it has all but caught up with regular smartphone sales becoming substantially high.
Don’t let the smartphone price get in your way. You can easily pick the smartphone of your choice and buy it with the Bajaj Finserv EMI Network Card, which you can use at over 1 lakh partner stores and e-commerce platforms, across 1,900+ Indian cities. The EMI Network Card also comes with a pre-approved limit of up to Rs. 4 lakh.