Chinese handset maker Realme on Friday said it is aiming to capture up to 15 per cent share in the Indian smartphone market this year which will place it among the top three players in the country.
At the end of the April-June period, Xiaomi held the numero uno position with 28 per cent market share, Samsung bagged the second spot at 25 per cent and Vivo was place at third slot with 11 per cent share, according to Counterpoint Research.
Realme expects to sell 15-20 million smartphones in 2019, its India CEO Madhav Sheth said on the sidelines of an event to launch its new smartphone 'Realme XT'.
Realme XT series smartphones are priced in the range of Rs 15,999 to Rs 18,999 and come with an internal storage of 64 GB to 128 GB.
"We are aspiring to be among top three smartphone players by end of this year. We are expecting market share of 14-15 per cent with sale of around 15-20 million smartphones in 2019," Sheth told reporters.
According to techARC India report, Realme broke into the top 10 most used Smartphones in India in just a span of over one year.
"We expect to complete third quarter with sale of 10.5-11 million. We are right on track of our target," Sheth said.
As per both Counterpoint and IDC, Realme was 4th largest smartphone brand in India since the last quarter of 2018.
Sheth said the company expects high sales during the upcoming festive season for which it has invested Rs 300 crore during the ongoing quarter to set up eight new assembly lines for Realme phones.
"We have enhanced production capacity to 3.6 million smartphones per month from 1-1.5 million earlier and hired another 3,000 people when the new assembly lines were added. Now our total headcount is around 6,500 people at our Greater Noida factory," Sheth said.
When asked about Realme competitors selling devices at a bit lower price point then the company's new range, Sheth said India is all about performance devices and lower pricing may come as icing on the cake.
"Indian consumers prefer performance. Realme smartphones focus on performance and pricing comes later. There have been around 350 mobile phone brands registered in India in the last 10 years. Out of this around 334 have shut down because they always focussed on pricing," Sheth said.
Launched as an online brand, Realme has also started expanding into traditional retail market. The company is currently selling smartphone across 7,000 outlets in 150 cities.
Realme was the second largest smartphone player in the online segment in India with 17 per cent market share in the second quarter of 2019, according to Counterpoint's Market Monitor service.
"It takes time to convince retailers to sell our smartphones because we pay very less margin to them. Some retailers ask us to raise the price and give them some margin which we don't do. We are aspiring to sell through 20,000 outlets by the end of this year," Sheth said.
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