With Indian handset makers grabbing nearly 25 per cent of the market, big chipmakers such as Samsung and Qualcomm have launched handset development platforms to break into this segment.
The solution offers key phone components including camera, sensors, memory, display drivers and reference design — all bundled with the chipset. This not only brings down the development cost of the Indian brands significantly but also enables the handset makers to create differentiation.
At present, only smaller semi-conductor companies such as the Taiwan-based MediaTek is offering this type of solution to the Indian handset makers while the big boys have been focussed on the multinational players such as Nokia and Apple. But now with the Indian brands growing in leaps and bonds, Samsung and Qualcomm have jumped into the fray.
“The Indian brands were predominantly in the GSM space till now but with the launch of 3G services, Qualcomm is enabling them to move up the value chain to become an original equipment manufacturer (OEM). But there are many steps to that and we are shepherding the Indian brand to get there,” said Mr Sandeep Sibal, Country Manager and Vice President - Business Development for Qualcomm India and South Asia.
The US chipmaker has launched its Qualcomm Reference Design programme in India, which combines key elements of the mobile phone such as memory, sensors and display on top of its chipset solution.
Cost-effective solution
“This programme is aimed at simplifying the time to launch and offer cost-effective solution to Indian brands,” said Mr Sibal. Qualcomm till now has been supplying plain vanilla chipsets to the Indian brands, including Micromax, Lava and Spice and hopes its existing relationship will translate into more business under the new programme.
For Samsung, however, this is the first connection with local handset makers here. The Korean electronics major has been launched the LSI Total Solution aimed at getting Indian brands to get on to its chip solution.
Mr O.S. Lee, President of Samsung Asia Pacific, said, “We are going to try our best to break into this market. We have had great success with this programme in countries like China where leading vendors like Lenovo are using our solution for making phones.”
Samsung recently did a road show in New Delhi where it invited Indian phone companies along with design houses from China, Korea and Singapore to showcase the platform. “The response has been good. Hopefully, we can have some product in India next year,” said Mr Lee.
More choices
Entry of these big players into this segment has given more choices to the Indian handset makers that are now evaluating their options. “We are in talks with both Samsung and Qualcomm. Such initiatives will help us in competing with the MNC brands in terms of creating product differentiation. The solution also brings down costs drastically which will enable us to make available 3G phones at sub-$70 levels,” said Mr S N Rai, Co-founder & Director of Lava Mobiles.
There are over 150 Indian brands in the market but most of them are dependant on software and hardware solutions available in China and Taiwan. As a result they are not able to control key aspects such as features, design and applications built into their phones, which put them as the second best to multinational brands.
The chipmakers claim that the bundled solutions now on offer could help the Indian brands improve quality and get more control on their products.