Oppo to increase India marketing budget to drive sales; to stay away from premium segment

NEW DELHI: Chinese handset maker Oppo won’t jump into the premium smartphone market in India in a big way, and instead focus on the higher-volume mid-range category as well as try to change its image from a camera-only focussed brand, in a bid to regain lost market share to aggressive rivals such as Xiaomi and Huawei.

The brand is now planning to ramp up its marketing efforts with an increased budget and will come up with various campaigns around the Asia Cup, Diwali and Christmas to drive sales in India, which is among the largest smartphone markets globally.

“India’s consumption level is growing but it has not met our expectations as compared to other markets We need more time,” Will Yang, brand director at Oppo India, told ET.

“We are not aggressively jumping into to premium segment of Rs 30,000 and above. That's not realistic for us. We would continue to be between Rs 15,000 and Rs 25,000 category,” he added.

The handset maker is now trying to break its camera-phone brand image in the market, and the new launch—Find X—is aligned with its new brand strategy.

“We found from our branding research that Indian consumers think that camera is the only strength that Oppo has. This has been the biggest challenge from the brand perspective for us,” Yang said. “The new phone launch is important to change that perception.”

Oppo has lost significant market share in the last one year to Xiaomi and Huawei in India. It had 5.6% smartphone share in the first quarter of 2018, down from 9.9% share during a year earlier period, according to Counterpoint research. Xiaomi maintained its lead in Q1 with 31.1% market share, followed by Samsung (26.2%) and Vivo (5.8%).

The brand will continue to focus on offline channels in the near-term to drive sales and said that in-depth partnerships with e-commerce players are not a priority. “The e-commerce opportunity is huge in India and is growing rapidly, and we don’t want to miss out on this platform. However, offline will remain the main channel for Oppo,” the executive said.

On lost market share, Yang said that is one of the elements of consideration but not the priority for Oppo currently.

“We have deliberately stayed away from sub-Rs 10,000 category as part of our product strategy. We are currently not focused on sales performance, rather working on providing better smartphone innovation beyond the camera,” he added.

Oppo is banking big on its next flagship smartphone under the mid-segment, which it expects will bring back growth to the brand in India.

“Find X is important from a branding perspective but next product is important to drive sales. We expect that product to bring energy back to Oppo,” Yang said.

Oppo’s new manufacturing facility in Greater Noida is expected to come into operations in the second half of 2019. “We are setting up a bigger unit with Rs 2,000 crore investment…We plan to shift to the bigger factory by next year,” Yang said.

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