Domestic mobile handset business Lava is targeting to attain a market place share of 5% in the smartphone segment by the finish of the present economic year and is banking on the loyalty of its function phone prospects to reach it.
Lava has a market place share of about 20% in function phones and due to the fact most of the upgrades to smartphones will come from this segment, the business expects to grow to be a larger player in the smartphone segment, which is at the moment ruled by Chinese brands.
In January, the business launched a ‘made-to-order’ smartphone that can be manufactured as per customers’ specifications. The business has also launched a phone upgrade programme, enabling customers to upgrade RAM/ storage on their devices at a service centre.
“We have just made a serious foray in smartphones … we plan to end the year with 5% market share in smartphones. Because of this base of feature phones that we have and as the new customers are to come from the base of feature phones … our strong equity with these consumers and also our capability to convert the learnings from them into products, I think we should be able to do well,” Sunil Raina, president and company head, Lava International, told FE.
Lava has also been chosen as one of the 5 nearby firms below the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for smartphone manufacturing. Lava, like quite a few other folks, has not been capable to meet the production target for FY21, but the business hopes to meet the targets in coming years and get the requisite incentives from the government. It plans to come out with 5G smartphones in the third quarter (October-December) of this fiscal in the price tag variety of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000.
Raina mentioned that even though 5G devices have began reaching the market place, networks are not but prepared with 5G services. “We believe 2022 will see lot of action on the 5G network side and therefore devices will be much more than you see today. At the same time, we also know that people want to buy a future-proof device … and if it has 5G, then you are assured that you have not got the wrong device. Therefore we are building our portfolio which has 5G phones as well,” he mentioned.
The business at the moment has a production capacity of 50 million devices annually. Of the production, 70% is consumed locally and rest 30% is exported.