Motorola left India for good and now is no close to coming back than Samsung leaving India. In other news, Lenovo has reached India with its own set of mobiles in practically all the ranges. Lenovo is no unknown brand in India albeit for a different product. It is the largest maker of PCs in the world right now and is taking its plunge in the lucrative smartphone world with trusty Android sword.
Everyone saw Dell’s departure from the Mobile world as well which is a stupid move, frankly. The first one was coming into it unprepared. Anyways, I hope this retreat is more about regrouping and coming back strongly and quickly rather than waiting for some miracle to happen. When the company that makes OS for your hardware is moving to other platforms, staying is not a good move.
So, on the count, two US companies are retreating while a Chinese company is succeeding in its own business and venturing in the promise land. Add ZTE’s rise and what we have in our hands is a shift of success. Now, this post is not about China’s prowess in manufacturing or its dominance in it. Neither am I talking about how, by making cheap phones China is eating away competition’s pie.
What I want to talk about is the respect Chinese companies are gaining and fast.
There was a time just after World War II when Japan started recovering its economy. They started out with making cheaper automobiles than their US and European counterparts. It was almost a similar situation like the current one with Mobile phones. People who had money bought genuine cars while people who wanted to save some money or did not have much money bought the Japanese cars. Of course, this was then. Now, Asian car makers have established themselves as trusty and reliable as anyone.
A similar trend was visible in Electronics like TV, Fridge etc. Companies like Sony and Samsung have become unanimous with quality and trust and people have forgotten that they are not American or European Brands. Samsung for example is currently ruling the roost with its smartphones.
Coming back to Lenovo, its laptops are sturdy and its Thinkpad series is especially commendable. The laptops of mid and lower range have also impressed me a lot. I bought a laptop for my father a long time back and it still runs Windows 7 smoothly.
On the other hand, my HP laptop (years later) is already painful for me to take anywhere. This dedication to quality has given Lenovo (and other companies of the east) has made the customer shift not just for the money but in mindset as well.
Lenovo, if manages to keep the same build quality in its phones as its laptops, it might be able to crack a whip where Dell failed despite being the first company to come up with a phablet and Motorola failed in India despite being the first company to come up with Mobiles and despite being Google’s subsidiary now.
Your thoughts welcome!
India’s largest telecommunication company, state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is in loss, and tring hard to improve its financial status by following top private players like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea. BSNL took some moves which are never going to be popular among subscribers – charging Rs 100 for 2G SIM replacement (that’s probably highest among mobile operator), Blackout days extended to voice calls along with SMS (Idea and Airtel are doing this), no bundled SMS on SMS packs.
Now BSNL, which is India’s largest broadband service provider has revised its all broadband combo plans. With the growth of mobile, BSNL and other players’ landline services take a negative growth, and this trend is seen across the globe.
With BSNL’s new revision all broadband combo plans which were offering broadband services along with some free calls to any network (at different pulse, may be), are now offering free calls to BSNL network only. To make calls to other networks you will be charged seperately.
Already BSNL’s broadband services are getting competition from local players like Beam in Hyderabad, Alliance, Meghbela, Wishnet at Kolkata. Interestingly best broadband tariff are available with MTNL, BSNL’s sister serving in Delhi and Mumbai. I think it’s best for BSNL to delink landline and ADSL broadband and provide FTTH at an affordable price.