Brands pushed Indians to buy premium phones. Now, they’re paying a price

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Indians are holding on to their smartphones for a record period of nearly four years, data from three independent market researchers showed, as exchange offers and interest-free loans fail to offset soaring prices in a challenging economy.Brands have been nudging buyers towards the premium end, where the average smartphone now costs over ₹26,000, against ₹17,000 in 2021. The devices themselves have become sturdier and offer extended software upgrades, making phone purchases more discretionary and less urgent.“Our business used to thrive on enthusiasts and high net-worth individuals, who would previously upgrade their smartphones every year.

Over the past year, we’re seeing such buyers also refraining from making purchases because the premium phones have all become incremental, and buyers get little to no worth out of buying a new phone worth over ₹1 lakh every year,” said Manish Khatri, partner at Mumbai-based electronics retailer Mahesh Telecom.Lengthening usage comes as a double whammy for brands, which already saw a dip in the total value of smartphones sold in India in the first three months of this calendar year. On 13 April, Mint reported that rising smartphone prices, coupled with the breakout of the Iran war, depressed smartphone sales, both by volume and value.India’s smartphone market was the world’s fastest-growing until 2021, and has become the second-largest in the last 10 years.

However, a doubling of memory chip costs over the past year has forced manufacturers to raise prices by nearly 40% across their portfolio, leaving prospective buyers with fewer choices. Queries sent to India's top five smartphone brands Vivo, Samsung, Oppo, Realme and Apple remained unanswered.In a