The Sad Trend Being Followed by Android Smartphones in India

Android smartphones have always been the go-to option for Indian consumers. The Indian market is a price-based market. That is one of the major reasons behind the rising popularity and availability of mid-range smartphones. Companies need to do a lot of cost-cutting in producing a mid-range smartphone and since that is the only kind of product that appeals to the masses, they can not stop. The differences also rise in specific regions. The user and software experience is very different in the EU and US regions as compared to the Indian market.

When it comes to India, a whopping 85% of smartphones in the market is below the INR 15K mark. In the last 2 years, smartphone prices have increased, but that is also because of GST and logistics. However, over the years, as prices rise, the android experience of these smartphones saw a major dip. Some digging in the market shares shows that Xiaomi is on the top(refer to the chart below). Followed by Samsung, Vivo, Realme and Oppo. These are the big players of the Indian smartphone market.

Vivo, Oppo and Realme are all from the BBK group. So the three big players of the Indian android smartphones market are Xiaomi, Samsung and BBK. If you remember, the "showcasing of ads on a smartphone" trend was started by Xiaomi around 3 years ago. A lot of people were vocal about it because they thought that this might actually become a trend, if not stopped. That is what is happening.

Xiaomi in recent times has toned down the frequency of the ads, but there are still some apps that you can not uninstall, like the security apps. Even for very basic functions, like the weather app or the calculator, the phone asks for multiple permissions. Privacy is always an issue with these custom UIs and the security apps are always running in the background.

This ad situation is also very common in Vivo and Oppo. Realme has it better but still does have bloatware. The only brand in the BBK group that offers a clean UI is OnePlus. However, with the OnePlus-Oppo merger, we hope that things remain the same and no one messes with the Oxygen OS.

Another trend that is going on in the mid-range smartphone market is bloatware. This is very evident in the mid-range Samsung devices. Samsung has multiple line-ups and the F, M and A series are mid-range phones. The "M"series is an Amazon exclusive, "F" series is the same phone rebranded for Flipkart and the "A" series is available both online and offline. These phones have started coming with a lot of bloatware. Even while setting up the phone, if you are not aware, you might give permissions to a lot of bloatware on your phone. Samsung used to be cleaner but has started adding a lot of bloatware in the current phones.

If you are buying an android phone, the end-user experience is just not that great. There are still some exceptions like OnePlus, but one thing to note is that OnePlus doesn't really fall in the mid-range category and most of their phones are above the INR 20K mark. If you are looking for a phone under INR 20K with no ads and bloatware, then your best bet would be Nokia and Motorola. Lately, Nokia has become very insignificant in the Indian smartphone market. The only option is Motorola. They have been bringing out good phones for the past 7-8 months. However, the market share held by Motorola is a little above 2%, so it does not make a big impact. The three big giants, Samsung, Xiaomi and BBK group are the most obvious option in this price segment.

If this continues, the consumer will start shifting towards slightly pricey options like the iPhone. Yes, the iPhone is expensive, but the user experience and the software stability is something that can keep a smartphone going for 4 years without any issue. We can only hope for the situation to change.