Indian Smartphone Leader Micromax Plans to Sell Devices in China

OREANDA-NEWS. Micromax is India's top local smartphone brand, often battling Samsung for the country's No. 1 position. Now, the company is looking to globalise its business.

At the RISE Conference in Hong Kong, Micromax co-founder Vikas Jain said that entering China is an essential step for his company's goal of becoming one of the top five global brands by 2020.

Micromax sold over 36 million smartphones, feature phones and non-Internet capable handsets in India last year, but fierce competition with Samsung and Chinese players like Xiaomi, Lenovo and Huawei has curtailed its efforts, and forced it to look overseas to grow.

Peddling phones in China's saturated market isn't going to be easy, analysts say. For one, most of the growth in the Chinese market has already shifted to mid- and high-end phones. "The entry level device ecosystem is more mature than [in] any other country," Tarun Pathak of CounterPoint Research said.

Micromax also sells its phones in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Russia. Jain said that the company is also studying the US market, and could enter more than one new country in the next 12 months.

Micromax, unlike its more mid-range subisdiary, Yu, is aggressively focused on selling affordable smartphones. Its more expensive phones are priced around $220, but go as cheap as $75.