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The company, which entered India in 2013, reported revenues of Rs 500 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 2,750 crore in 2014-15 from the domestic market, a growth of 550 per cent, he said.
Addressing mediapersons in Hyderabad on Saturday, William Lu, president of Gionee, said the company was committed to ‘Make in India’ and was planning to invest in India for local manufacturing and explore the feasibility to make India an export hub for Saarc region and Africa.
“At present, India is our second-largest market after China. Our plan is to build our brand and focus on local manufacturing this year, make Gionee an India-made Chinese multinational company in 2016 and become one of the top two brands in India by 2017,” Lu said. Gionee, which manufactures 40 million handsets a year at its Shenzhen plant in China, is investing $160 million to increase the capacity to 100 million.
The company has set a target to sell 40 million units globally this year, as against 28 million last year. Of this, it expects eight million units to be shipped to India. According to import figures in India till February 2015, Gionee topped the list with 3.79 million units, followed by ZTE with 1.8 million units.
Stating that smartphone is a label of identity and expression of personality, Lu said though there are over 100 mobile brands in the Indian market, around 90 per cent of the current players would phase out by the time India would move from the stage of ‘competitive turbulence’ to the stage of ‘maturity’ within the next two years.
“Our strategy is to keep developing differentiated products. We will be launching two new models in the super-long standby M-Series and E8 model in the E-Series in India this year, Lu said, adding that 80 per cent of the models to be launched in India this year would be LTE (long-term evolution)-based.
Launches Gionee Elife S7 slim smartphone in India
Gionee on Saturday launched from Hyderabad Gionee Elife S7, its new high-end 5.5-mm slim smartphone, in the Indian market.
The handset, with a 5.2-inch capacitive full HD touch display, is equipped with a 13-MP primary camera and an 8-MP front one.
On the outside, the dual-SIM handset has a U-shaped skeleton made with aviation-level alloy, a non-removable back cover, protected fully by Corning Gorilla Glass-3.
Under its hood, Gionee Elife S7, priced at Rs 24,999, has an octa-core MediaTek processor, clocking 1.7 GHz per core, 2 GB RAM, a 2,700-mAh battery, 16 GB internal memory with no provision to expand externally.
