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How Brands Price Their Phones Across Segments

June 22, 2016

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We all have been using mobiles for a very long time now. They have evolved a lot from the time of its inception. From the classic feature phones by Nokia to the current Note series by Samsung or the bendable iPhone 6 Plus. The progression has surely seen a wide variety including flip phones, the slider phones with qwerty keyboards, the only qwerty phones, phablets, thinnest phones, etc. Nowadays, one cannot imagine their life without a mobile phone.

Nokia which ruled the market, once upon a time has now been taken over by Samsung’s phones. Samsung, emerged as the leader post 2009 when it launched its first android smartphone, i.e Samsung Galaxy i7500. Nokia clearly lost it by not adopting to the highly demanded Android OS. After that, for a few years it was the slew of smartphones by Samsung versus the string of iPhones by Apple. After which Microsoft joined the bandwagon with their Lumia series and became popular. The past few years also has seen the rise of some domestic brands like Micromax, Gionee and Karbonn trying to compete with the foreign players. Recently, Xiaomi and Asus are making waves with their phones, too.

Point being, the smartphone industry is a chaotic one and you never know, who will have the ball in their court. The indian customer is very demanding and the companies scramble to get the right mix for the various segment of customers. The customer on the other hand, also takes great pains to decide the trade-offs on different variables which are OS, display size, camera quality, etc. And the most important of all, the price of a phone is the biggest factor.

With innumerable phones spread at different price ranges for our disposal. We at PriceBaba.com figured out that finding out the price difference between two phones from a same maufacturer would be an interesting static. And Voila! Here we have our findings.

The findings are derived by analysing the top 360 phones spread across 10 brands. From these 360 phones, we then collected the price of all the phones pertaining to one brand. We then further calculated the average difference between successive phones. After that it was just a matter of taking the mean (average) of those differences and here we are! We have the average price difference in two phones.

Check the price range for the different brands below:

Smartphones

Apple: Considering 11 phones from Apple, the cheapest phone was the Apple 4S 8GB at Rs. 13,000 approx. Apple has an average jump of approximately 5,000 rupees which is justified considering their posh reputation in the Indian market. It is common knowledge that Apple phones are available in the upper end of the spectrum and this is another statistic corroborated by the data presented here.

Gionee: This manufacturer entered India in 2013 and has aimed the lower end of the budget range. The cheapest phone by Gionee was the Gionee Long L700 at a price of Rs. 1,899 and there are 16 phones lined up in the next 25,000 rupees giving us a price difference of Rs. 1,443 between two phones. This aggressively marketed Elife models by Gionee are actually amongst its pricier phones.

HTC: Out of the 16 phones, the average price difference between two phones of HTC is of Rs. 1,600. By focussing on the segment of Rs. 15,000 to Rs. 25,000, HTC has exactly catered to the tastes of a wider audience which could be one of the reason why the HTC Desire 816 and Desire 820 have become highly popular.

LG: LG made the world’s first CDMA digital mobile handset back in 1997 and is still going strong. After looking the data of 22 phones from LG, we found out that 16 phones were priced less than Rs. 30,000 and the phones had a average price gap of Rs. 1,963.

Micromax: We all know about this Indian brand which got popular by investing heavily in advertising during the initial IPL seasons and it seems to have paid off well! It also further made waves when it got Hugh Jackman a.k.a The Wolverine as one of their brand ambassador. Micromax is known for manufacturing affordable, good quality phones and our data proves that correct. Out of the 360 phones which we considered, Micromax has a mind boggling 41 phones priced less than Rs. 20,000 with a different phone for every 300 bucks you add.

Nokia/Microsoft: In order to gain a foothold in the mobile industry, Microsoft bought the former giant Nokia. Although, Microsoft has discontinued using the Nokia brand on its phone, the Lumia series was a good one and will hopefully continue to do so with the Microsoft series. We found 22 phones in our list and most of them are priced less than Rs. 20,000 except the Nokia Lumia 830 and Lumia 930.

Oppo: This Chinese company made its debut in India with its flagship phone, the N1. The brand is slowly gaining popularity, and it has 12 phones from this manufacturer and most of them are priced between Rs. 10,000 and Rs. 30,000, unlike others like Micromax or Nokia. Also, the price difference between these two phones from this brand is Rs. 2,208 which is comparatively higher than majority of the brands.

Samsung: Although there are many competitors, Samsung has managed to stay the big daddy when it comes to smartphones in India. An Indian customer can always find a alternate phone of Samsung with similar pricing and specs., that’s because there is a wide variety of it. There are 59Samsung mobiles and therefore the brand has managed to offer a phone for every 1000 bucks you add! (945 to be precise).

Sony: The Sony Xperia series helped Sony retain its place in the Indian smartphone industry. Sony has a different phone for every 1,250 rupees and there are 22 of them.

Spice: Spice is among the manufacturers with less traction in India and has 8 phones in our list all priced below Rs. 10,000. Not to our surprise the phone difference among these phones is Rs. 675.

Our derivations have given us a great perspective on how the smartphone market has exploded in the past few months. Manufacturers, Indian and non-indian are fighting it out tooth and nail to get that extra percent of the market share which in turn will be beneficial for the customer since ‘Customer is the King’.


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