Micromax enters premium segment with Dual 5 series
Micromax Informatics Ltd on Wednesday launched the Dual 5 mobile phone series, hoping to win 10% share of the premium category in 12 months.
The company defines premium segment as the ₹20,000-40,000 price range. The Dual 5, which was introduced on Wednesday, will be followed by Dual 3 and Dual 2 in the next few months. These phones will cost ₹10,000-35,000.
The Dual 5 has 13 MP+13 MP dual rear camera and 13 MP front shooter with flash. The dual camera can automatically synthesize 3D videos and 3D photos which can be viewed using VR glasses. The phones are powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor and comes with a 128 GB onboard memory.
Micromax, which held back handset launches and aggressive marketing in the last two quarters, expects to introduce four to five new phones in the premium segment over the next three months, co-founder Rahul Sharma said. “We chose to be less aggressive and take a step back…you have to say no at times to focus on long-term growth. We wanted to stay away from aggressive discounting and then demonetisation happened and we pushed our product releases.”
Chinese handset makers are dominating the Indian smartphone market by offering phones with better specifications at steep prices. According to research firm IDC, in the fourth quarter, Samsung dominated with 25.1% market share followed by Xiaomi 10.7%, Lenovo 9.9%, Oppo 8.6% and Vivo 7.6%, pushing Micromax to the sixth position.
However, Micromax expects 20-25% growth in revenues for the year ended March 2018 on the back of new product launches under the Micromax and Yu brands. The company did not reveal the revenue it is expecting for the year ended March 2017.
With its Dual 5 series, Micromax also expects its average selling price to go up to ₹8,000 – ₹9,000 this year from last year’s ₹5,670.