Expect your new Smartphone to be costlier
Most Mobile companies in India didn’t increase the price of their existing handsets due to Intense competition in the Indian Market. According to President of Indian Cellular Association Pankaj Mohindroo, “Companies are evaluating to increase price between 1% and 2.5% but not implementing it yet.” Moreover, the depreciation of rupee by 4-5% has deeply affected the business sections operating on very thin profit margins. As per analysts, Mobile Handset makers will be left with no other option than to assemble more components locally to cope with currency rate fluctuations. A CEO of a leading company further talked about acceleration of SMT (Surface mounting technology set ups in order to reduce the impact of Rupee depreciation.
Most of leading Mobile brands like Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo and Lava have already started locally assembling Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) which contribute 50% of a smartphone’s manufacturing cost. Others like Vivo and Micromax are planning to commence this higher level of locall manufacturing of components within next couple of months. Leading names like Intex and Karbonn Mobiles also couldn’t increase prices due to the price wars but can’t take it any further now. Hence, most of the above mentioned Mobile phone companies will be forced to Make in India and positively, this could help in creating more jobs in India. Well, the management of mobile manufacturing companies tackle this challenge of depreciating Rupee and manufacturing locally will be interesting to see. Moreover, the customers have too many options to choose from and hence, the Smartphone needs to deliver on Quality and be affordable at the same time.
Make in India could also be challenging task because some companies need to acquire lands and setup facilities and manufacturing plants etc and this would mean injecting more capital. So, all these things need to be planned carefully for successfully recovering the invested money into business. Moreover, the Internet service providers could also be affected because as the revolution of Internet in Indian market heavily increased the sale of smartphones and hence, the Increase in Smartphone prices will also affect the sale of Telecom company services like Data plans. Well, for now, we can keep checking the currency fluctuations and hope our favourite handsets don’t make us shell out more bucks.
