HTC Plunges Into The Sub 10K Smartphone Indian Market. Is It The Right Move?

Today we saw three new phones from the Taiwanese smartphone brand HTC coming to India. One of them, (HTC Desire 210 for Rs 8,700) has broken into the sub-10K bracket of smartphones. Till a year ago HTC had no plans to foray into the budget phones category. However, looking at the current scenario of mobile business and extreme demand from the Indian sub-continent, where brands like Micromax and Karbonn do extremely well in the budget segment, HTC has taken a step to come with less expensive smartphones.

So what does this spell for the company?
HTC as a brand has been a pillar of beautiful and luxurious smartphones that caters mid to high-end mobile phone users. They are somewhat successful here and phones such as HTC One and upper end of Desire series has done wonders for them. Nevertheless, the company seems to be moving towards capturing the lower-end market as well, which constitutes for a large part of the smartphone user base in India.
This should bring fresh funds to the company and as a brand they should be able to produce some new nice devices. Hopefully this does not mean that the company takes its efforts off the high-end phones, but diverts a bit of its time on budget smartphones as well.

Will this model work?
Looking at companies such as Samsung, LG and Sony, who have phones in budget, mid and luxury segment, HTC with a reliable design, research and development team should not have too much trouble. Yes, this is a new playfield for HTC and we do expect the first couple of devices to be a more of a blow. This should not be considered as a negative point, as this will help them to bring better second and third generation of budget smart phones.

The budget segment in India is on fire right now. With 3G services in place more and more people are getting connected using a smartphone. HTC can take its budget smartphones to tier 2 and 3 markets in India (and also developing markets) and grab a piece of the cheaper smartphone pie.

Desire 210 is a start and we are hoping to see better low-end devices coming soon from camp HTC. Also, smartphones in budget to mid-end segment has done wonders for Nokia, if we take India as an example. HTC can take a page from Nokia’s book and run with it. Our bet is that the new model will work for HTC, but not without teething issues. Our advice, just keep making pretty phones for the budget segment as well (with decent hardware) and wish for the dollar price not to fluctuate too much.