Low-priced Chinese mobiles take on known brands

Sales of low-priced Chinese origin mobiles marked a high growth in recent times in Bangladesh challenging the domination of leading global mobile brands, experts and traders said, reports NewAge.
Brand giants such as Nokia, Samsumg, LG, Siemens, Sagem and Sony Eriksson which dominated the market even two years ago are now facing challenges these days from lesser known brands such as Symphony, Maximus, Sprint, Digital and I-Max.
‘Most of such non-brand Chinese sets account for about 60 per cent of the monthly sales volume,’ the Bangladesh Mobile Phone Businessmens’ Association president, Nizam Uddin Ziku, said.
He told New Age customers, especially low-end users, were showing less interest in known brands which sell for double the prices of Chinese origin sets but have less features.
Users also feel comfortable as importers give a year’s warranty for such Chinese sets, said an official of the Siemens Bangladesh, which started marketing Maximus two years ago.
On an average at least a million new mobiles are sold in Bangladesh every month as the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission statistics show the number of new connections increased to 53.83 million till January from 50.51 million in November 2009.
Market operators have said traders have sold mobiles worth Tk 300 crore each month in the recent past.
They said official dealers had almost stopped selling brands such as Motorola, Siemens, Sagem and Sony Eriksson in the local market.
Many of them have rather started marketing low-priced Chinese origin sets to stay competitive against market leaders Nokia and Samsung, they said.
Rageebul Kabir, managing director of the CMPL Nokia, a major distributor of Nokia brand in Bangladesh, said in July 2009 that import of a large quantity of non-brand Chinese mobile had posed worries for traders of mobiles of reputed brands.
There are around 300 mobile importers in Bangladesh, according to statistics available with the telecoms regulatory commission. But only 30 to 40 businessmen are active. Almost all mobile imports are from China.
The mobile phone businessmen’s association president said, ‘All mobiles come from China but we supply sets for low prices.’

Courtesy of NewAge