Bengaluru, (Aryavarth): In India, not long ago, American, European, Korean and Japanese companies ruled the wallet of Indian mobile users. Indian Startups like Micromax had debuted on the horizon, as the next generation of Indian companies.
Initially, going was great for Micromax, Indian consumers got new features at a fraction of the price. The success of Micromax made Chinese firms aware of India’s potential and appetite for new brands. All of them started making plans to capture the next billion users from India.
The next phase came with the launch of Jio, and the Indian handset market exploded in demand. Jio brought in many users, and now all of them wanted smartphones, the low cost of data plans further fuelled this demand. At this point, the Indian manufacturers lost ground and Chinese onslaught started. Chinese knew about the deep-rooted mistrust Indians held about them, and they left no stone unturned to damage Indian interest till date. They covertly used the love of Indians for Cricket and Bollywood to their favour. These Chinese brands looked like homegrown Indian brands.
They took on, non-Chinese names, hired celebrity stars from Bollywood, painted the town with their hoardings, even bought the title rights of the Indian cricket team. In 2017, Vivo acquired IPL title rights for Rs 2,199 crore for five years, which comes to Rs 440 crore annually. Apart from Vivo, IPL has seen Chinese smartphone brands Oppo, Xiaomi, Realme, and OnePlus taking up prime ad slots for an average consumer, Indian brands started looking pale. For the lure of money, the entire country pushed China forward, ditching mother India. Can there be anything more shameful, that our cricket has been hijacked by our enemy number one?
China Holds 70% Market Share
Estimates say that the Chinese mobile handset companies are holding around 70% of the Indian market share. In 2019 alone, Chinese manufacturers sold 113 Million mobiles to consumers in India. In terms of market share, Xiaomi is still the number 1 mobile brand in India with 30% Market Share, followed by Vivo that has a 17% share. South Korea based Samsung has slipped to third with a 16% share, again followed by China-based Realme.
Make In India or “Assembled In India”
While the NDA government under the stewardess of Prime Minister Modi has managed to push most of the mobile phones successfully manufactured to set base India. On the surface, these mobiles now look made in India. Digging deeper, this may not be true, our dependency on China for essential electronic parts and processors remains very high. Many high-value components, like chips and memory, are still being imported. Indian industrialists have less appetite to set manufacturing units for these high tech components, hence the lack of a mobile manufacturing ecosystem. The Government, in its right earnest, stepped in by raising duties on imported parts. But lo behold, even after paying taxes, the Indian mobile companies find it profitable to import raw materials from China, Vietnam and Taiwan rather than procuring it from Indian manufacturers.
The easy way out is to invite Chinese firms to manufacture components in India; we have to avoid Chinese blood from entering our domains for the foreseeable future. Trade cannot be decoupled from their anti-Indian actions. The better alternative will be to invite manufacturers from Korea, Japan, Israel and Germany to manufacture these in India. By unveiling a special tax holiday and incentives, we can lure these components and manufacturers to India. It will take us from “Assembled In India” to “Make in India.”
The Government of India should look at launching an “Indianization” program for mobile handset manufacturers, attracting chip manufactures like Intel, ARM and AMD may not be a cakewalk. However, we need to get them to India to build an ecosystem for mobile companies.
What Are The Risks in Buying a Chinese Phone?
The Chinese companies are getting dented by the imperialistic strategies of the Chinese Communist Party. Sometimes it reminds us of what Hitler was doing before World War 2. The United States of America has given enough signals that intense action is on the way to avenge for the Wuhan Coronavirus.
Last year in May, America had banned Huawei, a Chinese telecom company in their national interest, they had alleged close relations to the Chinese Communist Party and risk of spying. It’s not easy going for Huawei, while the mobile phone ban has hurt its sales, now its 5G equipment is getting banned the world over for allegations of spying for China. Voices in India are also asking the NDA Government to ban them from supplying 5G equipment, in the national interest.
Now, when America bans a company, hell breaks loose. When America banned Huawei, Apple store and google play store also got involved, they could no longer supply or update the software. Mind you, if you don’t have apple IOS or Android IOS, how will your phone run? Without updates, your phone would be as good as a paperweight. As a countermeasure, Huawei is developing its operating system; we are not sure if you will find American apps like Facebook and LinkedIn on it, as a future ban may not permit any trade relations. The question is, will you use an operating system from a company that has been banned for 5G tenders in many countries, due to risks of spying for the Chinese Government. Will your data be safe? We don’t know, and you have to decide.
Huawei is Throwing Money to Indian Developers, Will They Betray India?
Huawei held a developer’s meet in New Delhi in late December 2019, prominent Indian companies who have apps on the Google Play Store attended the program to know more about Huawei Mobile Services and the Huawei App Gallery. Huawei has started an HMS Ecosystem Incentive Program. Developing an app for HMS will rake in $5000 while making it exclusive to HMS will rake in $5000 more. Huawei is giving an additional $10,000 to promote it on the App Gallery. Furthermore, apps that make use of the HMS APIs will be incentivised with more money, going up to $20,000.
Now, by throwing money, Huawei is putting billions of dollars to buy software developers. You must understand, they are using telecom to tighten the grip on the world, as all our transactions happen through mobile phones. It’s time that governments come clean and ban Huawei totally in the interest of national sovereignty and integrity. Until it can prove that it has no ties to the treacherous, imperialist and expansionist Chinese Communist Party, that is threatening world peace.