Chinese smartphone giant is betting big on e-commerce business so it is eyeing to increase its market share, revenue and sales in the Indian market with launch of its own online marketplace in India. The company is planning to launch its online sales through own e-commerce portal just before the Diwali festive season.
“We expect a significant share of our revenue to come from online sales…We do have plans to sell our smartphones through our own e-commerce site. The OPPO e-store is in an advanced stage and we expect to start sales on it before Diwali this year,” Charles Wong, CEO, OPPO India, told ET.
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After working with a robust offline model, Wong believes that Oppo is aiming to ensure that its products are available to customers who wait for weeks in E-Commerce websites to buy their handsets. According to OPPO, this customer segment has contributed big in making XIaomi the biggest name in Indian market.
“Hence, we implemented an aggressive multi-channel strategy to make our products available to the large and growing internet-savvy audience across India,” Wong added.
To get maximum market share and growth for strong foothold in Indian market, OPPO is working towards its strategic partnerships with online selling platforms like Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Snapdeal and TataCliq.
“In India, consumers still prefer to experience the phones before purchasing and hence the offline segment for us has contributed to our sales significantly. But since the launch of our K series, we have seen encouraging growth in the online segment too,” he added.
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According to a recent study report by Counterpoint Research Update, Indian online smartphone shipment rate has seen a 17% YoY growth in the January-March quarter of 2019. Also, there is a 36% share of the overall sales in 2018, which has increased to 41% in the January-March quarter of 2019, because of Easy Monthly Installments offers and discounts.
In India, Xiaomi is the leading player with a 43% market share in Q1 2019, followed by Samsung and Realme with 15% and 11% share, respectively. Asus and Huawei are the other two names in the top five. So it is considered that the top 5 brands have nearly about 85% of the total online market share.
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On the other hand, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus, which were available as online-exclusive brands before are now shifting its business model to the offline market for the next set of growth.
As per the current scenario, it will be very crucial to see how smartphone companies will make strategies in the coming years.