Spice Mobility in an effort to revive its declining smartphone and handset business has partnered with Transsion to launch new devices in the Indian market. Our latest report on India, available here from the Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) Service, confirms to Spice Mobility having less than 1% of the smartphone market.
Spice plans to target the Entry (US$36 - 99) and Mid (US$100 - 190) price tiers. The two price segments together are expected account for more than 4/5th of the overall smartphone market in India in 2017. More details on price tier break ups at a country level available in our report from the Wireless Smartphone Strategy (WSS) Service.
We though expect Spice not to make much of an impact on its market share with this move, in a highly competitive and cluttered Indian smartphone market. For one, most of the Indian vendors have been on a retreat since the last three quarters, due to the intense competition from the Chinese vendors. The devices to be imported from China initially would also go on to attract the 10% customs duty proposed by the government recently, making them uncompetitive. To add to it Transsion already has its sub brands in Itel and TECNO operating in the Indian market. One advantage though for this Joint Venture could be coming from leveraging the extensive retail network of Spice in the country for selling the devices.
