Spreadtrum: chipsets for India

India is the world’s biggest “feature phone” market, and a Shanghai-based chip design company has its sights set firmly on that growing opportunity

Spreadtrum Communications has 63 percent of India’s baseband chipset market, making it the largest supplier of its kind to the South Asian country.

It has launched the new chipset SC9820 to power a local Indian mobile phone brand that is introducing 4G feature phones for the first time in the Indian telecom market.

Even though 4G networks are already available, many Indians are still using phones without smart operating systems like Android or iOS because these so-called feature phones are cheaper and easier to use.

India was the world’s biggest market for feature phones in 2017, with sales of 164 million units, according to International Data Corp, a US-based research firm.

Seizing the prospects, Spreadtrum has invested heavily in India. It has set up a research and development center in Noida, a planned city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. It has forged local partnerships with manufacturers and mobile operators, including Reliance, Samsung, Micromax, Intex, Lava, Airtel and Vodafone.

The Spreadtrum SC9820 is one of the most competitive 4G feature phone chipsets, supporting dual core and highperformance. The SC9850 supports a dual camera, which ushered in a major change in the Indian telecom industry in 2017.

Reliance JioPhone, the 4G feature phone powered by Spreadtrum’s chipset, “emerged as the No. 1 feature phone brand by shipments in the December quarter, overthrowing market leader Samsung for the first time,” according to a report by research firm Counterpoint Research.