Chinese smartphone maker is looking to increase its market share and revenue in the market with launch of its own online channel in India. The company has plans to start sales through own e-commerce site just before the Diwali festive season.
“We expect a significant share of our revenue to come from online sales…We do have plans to sell our smartphones through our own e-commerce site. The OPPO e-store is in an advanced stage and we expect to start sales on it before Diwali this year,” Charles Wong, CEO, OPPO India, told ET.
After working with a robust offline model, Wong believes that Oppo is aiming to ensure that its products are available to customers who wait for weeks in E-Commerce websites to buy their handsets. According to OPPO, this customer segment has contributed big in making XIaomi the biggest name in Indian market.
“Hence, we implemented an aggressive multi-channel strategy to make our products available to the large and growing internet-savvy audience across India,” Wong added.
To get maximum growth, OPPO will continue its partnerships with online selling platforms like Flipkart, Amazon, Paytm, Snapdeal and TataCliq.
“In India, consumers still prefer to experience the phones before purchasing and hence the offline segment for us has contributed to our sales significantly. But since the launch of our K series, we have seen encouraging growth in the online segment too,” he added.
According to a recent Counterpoint Research report, Indian online smartphone shipment rate has seen a 17% YoY growth in the January-March quarter of 2019. Also, there is a 36% share of the overall sales in 2018, which has increased to 41% in the January-March quarter of 2019, because of EMI offers and discounts.
In India, Xiaomi is the leader with a 43% market share in Q1 2019, followed by Samsung and Realme with 15% and 11% share, respectively. Asus and Huawei are the other two names in the top five. Note that, the top 5 brands have 85% of the total online market share.
Also Read: How Oppo, Vivo & OnePlus Are Making Waves With Single Parent
On the other hand, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus, which were online-exclusive brands earlier are now looking at the offline market for the next set of growth.
Seeing all this, it will be very interesting to see how smartphone companies will act in the coming few months.
