Smartphone , a device owned by almost everyone around us has become the invention of the decade like the Radio in the 1960's and T.V. in the late 90's and just like the Radio and TV , smartphones have carved their place as the "must have" piece of technology of our times , even though the first smartphone came in 2007 with the introduction of the revolutionary iPhone , the smartphone industry have just now caught up to the innovation that was spearheaded by vision of Steve Jobs.
The spread of the smartphone to the general population of India is a result of the special trait of the electronic market as any kind of technology gets cheaper as time goes on , smartphones have also seen an exponential growth over the past 5 years as they were once a commodity for the wealthy (the original iPhone) to a device which everyone can and needs to own if he wishes to keep up with the times.
With the ever increasing competition of the today's world one can only ask , what does the future hold for the smartphone industry ? That's what this short essay is all about.
1.The rise of Chinese smartphones
The smartphone era was brought upon main-stage with the introduction of the first iPhone, before that there were attempts to create tablets by Microsoft and some other brands but all of them lacked a key ingredient, simplicity ,and simplicity is what exactly Apple brought to the spotlight, Steve Jobs's vision of a device which could be operated by a person with almost no technical background was a groundbreaking one, which resonated with every customer who heard about it, Apple went on the become the most successful mobile phone brand on the back of that very idea.
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| Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone. |
But in the last few years after the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple's innovative edge was getting dull allowing other brands to prop up and make a name for themselves.
Where Industry giants Samsung and Apple were focused on making top of the line smartphones for the western market , the Chinese market was focused on making a cheap and reliable device that was affordable for the people in low income countries.
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| Chinese brands dominate the Asian market. |
2.The exponential growth of the Chinese market.
Chinese brands such as Huawei, Xiaomi , HTC, Vivo and Oppo have been the highest grossing brands in the Asian region. particularly Xiaomi which has been the highest selling smartphone brand in 2017 with their Redmi Note 4.
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| Chinese brands trying to one up their competition by using popular movie stars for their advertisements. |
The primary focus of these corporations is to sell their products to the middle class and the lower middle class demographic of their region , and since India ranks 112th on the per-capita income in the world, its inhabitants are a perfect target for these budget smartphones.
This became abundantly clear as companies like Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi became some of the largest advertisers on the Indian cable TV and internet. Using popular celebrities as their brand icon, these corporations knew that India was their next major consumer base as it was easy to transport and provide services to. This however has been a very bad news for Indian smartphone brands that cannot stand to compete against the Chinese products, in fact the competition has gotten to a point where Chinese mobile phone companies are driving out the Indian smartphone completely out of the business.
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| Indian mobile manufacturers like Intex and Micromax suffer greatly from the fierce Chinese competition. |
4.The secret advantage of Chinese manufacturers
With all the success that China has had, there were always some facts that were buried under the illusion of creativity and competition.
Intellectual property, commonly referred as IP is and idea which cannot be stolen of used by anyone other than who own its, we see this everyday in our lives in forms of Patents and copyrights, ever wonder why in Marvel movies the superheroes are called "Heroes", while on the other hand DC has to use the term "Meta-human"?, its because the word "Hero" is copyrighted by Marvel comics which means they and they only have a right to use it, no one else,
With this idea if Intellectual property in mind , we can see that all the technology that companies create is patented, but this is not the case for Chinese people, which always have a bad reputation for letting their government turn a blind eye towards Patent theft by their local companies, the same companies which earn a lot of revenue every year and support corrupt politicians to mend the law in their favour.
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| Chinese corporations are not afraid to steal the classified information form their competition . |
Therefore its not a big surprise that with the "help" of their government the local manufacturers will go ahead and use stolen technology in their own products to gain an advantage over their adversaries. And unlike the western market which is dominated by US, the Chinese corporations are under no threat to the legal persecution by their western counterparts.
5.The Future
It is unclear what the next major breakthrough the next smartphone is going to bring to the industry, some say that improving on the basic functionalities such as battery life or the over heating of the much larger phones would be essential before creating something extravagant just for the sake of spectacle would be a waste of time, but this is not stopped creative people with coming up with their own interpretations of the futuristic smartphone. some of them are seen below.
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| Modular phone where each component is fully customizable. |
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| Transparent phone made with organic materials. |
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| A phone that bends to fit your wrist. |
whether or not we get transparent folding smartphones its clear that India would be playing a major part as a ever growing consumer-centric nation.
written by
Jubin Dhantule
