India's Former Famous Smartphone, Micromax Now Scrabbles

By Staff Writer

Mar 13, 2016 06:13 AM EDT

India has been the world's smartphone market because of its rapid growth where deliveries of smartphones surged 29% to 103 million units in 2015. It surpassed Samsung but now, the company's market has almost been halved. Top executives stepped down and Micromax is now looking for growth outside its home country.

Micromax was founded in New Delhi in 2000 by four partners. Selling of mobile phones only began in 2008 and collaborates with Chinese manufacturers including Oppo, Coolpad and Gionee to create its market share. There were more than 40 new models that launched in 2015, MSN reports.

"What the Indian brands did to the global brands two years ago, Chinese phone makers are doing the same to Indian brands now, and over the next year we see tremendous competition for Micromax and other Indian smartphone makers," said Tarun Pathak, analyst at Counterpoint Research in New Delhi.

Micromax, although does not give out financial information claims it is still profitable.  About 80% of the firm still control by founders Jain, Rahul Sharma, Rajesh Agarwal and Sumeet Arora.  In the last five years, the company was able to raise about $90 million from investors.

According to Daily News & Analysis, the founders introduce outside managers to serve the company in 2014 during the time when Micromax and Samsung are on the verge of market share competition and of becoming the biggest mobile phone maker in India. Micromax considers of accelerating its output in India and double its local manufacturing production to nearly 3 million units per month over the next six months to one year.

In the past few months, signs show that many consumers are buying South Korea's Samsung and China's Lenovo Group Ltd.  Based on Canalys research, the share of Micromax in the Indian market fell to 13.2% from 21.7% in the quarter that ends in Dec. 31st while that of Samsung grew to 26.1% from 22% over the same period, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Micromax has been one of the top 10 brands in Russia and seeks partnership to help its further expansion outside India and increase the variety of the products it sells such as tablets and televisions. 

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