Chinese Real Me aims at the Indian smartphone market

In the Indian smartphone market, Xiaomi is showing its presence beyond Samsung Electronics, while new competitors appear and draw attention. Realme is the main character.

Real Me is a new smartphone maker about a year and a half after spinning out of Oppo. According to market research firm IDC, RealMe secured a 14.3% market share in India, the second largest smartphone market in the world in the first quarter. In this survey, Xiaomi still dominates the market with 27.1%. However, the number of units shipped to the Indian market by Realmi is showing phenomenal growth of 401.3% compared to the same period last year.

The reason Real Me is attracting attention in the Indian market is that it almost faithfully reproduces Xiaomi’s method. Not only Xiaomi but also Realmi sold smartphones only online in the first year to reduce overhead costs. However, from the previous quarter, it also started selling in offline stores in India. Offline stores still account for more than two-thirds of smartphones sold in India. When it comes to online sales, RealMe’s market share surged from 16.5% in the second quarter of this year to 26.5% in the third quarter.

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Real Me has released 10 types of smartphones with aggressive prices so far. All of these products range from $80 to $240, a sweet spot in the Indian market. In fact, according to IDC, the most-selling models in the third quarter of this year among the Real Me products are the C2 and 3i 3, all of which cost between $80 and $110.

Like Xiaomi, Realmi smartphones dominate competitors by adopting high-end hardware modules that exceed the price. For example, the $80 Real Me C2 has a 6-inch HD display with a 13 megapixel, 2 megapixel dual rear camera, a 4,000mAh battery, 2GB of memory, and 16GB of storage space. It also comes with an unlock function using LTE and face recognition.

In addition to its home country of China, Real Me is conducting business in 18 countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Egypt, and entered the European market in May of this year. According to data recently released by market research firm Counterpoint, RealMe’s global ranking in terms of shipments rose from 47th in the third quarter of 2018 to 7th in September this year. Smartphone shipments exceeded 10 million units, showing an increase in shipments of 808% over the same period. More than 80% of RealMe’s smartphones released so far are made in both Indian and Indonesian markets.

Analysts say that next year, RealMe will become a dominant player in the market, saying it is because emerging markets and online channel growth will still continue. You may think that the smartphone war is over, but it seems far away. Related information can be found here .