2024 to be 'good year' for smartphone industry: Xiaomi India President

The year 2024 promises to be a "good year" for the smartphone industry, Xiaomi India President Muralikrishnan B said on Wednesday as he pointed to the pace of economic growth, positive consumer sentiments, as well as the 5G devices uptick.

Terming India as a market of multitudes, Muralikrishnan asserted that there is an opportunity to have compelling 5G offering at every price point.

"We enter 2024 with the larger macro context looking a lot more brighter and positive. The Indian economy is among fastest growing large economies in the world. The consumer sentiment is up. And if one were to look at projections for 2024-2025 and beyond, things are looking very positive," Muralikrishnan said at a briefing.

For consumer companies these factors are likely to translate to growing consumer spends.

"The middle class, which has a huge spending potential, will continue to increase in India and this will be led, to a large extent, by productivity improvement that technology brings. And of course this has a lot of implication for consumer tech companies and smartphone companies like Xiaomi," he said.

While 2022 was a "challenging" year for the overall market, in 2023 too the market did not see volume growth.

"...in 2024 almost every analyst is putting out a fairly positive projection...it could be a single digit percentage growth in volume but average price points are also going to go up...so overall, the market will grow in 2024," he said.

This will be fuelled by 5G devices, he said noting that the 5G offerings are becoming affordable.

"This shapes up really well when people want to upgarde to their subsequent 5G devices. So, by all indications, 2024 promises to be a very good year so far as the smartphone industry goes," Muralikrishnan said.