Do we need another Mid-Ranger???

Aravind A

We as Indians are very lucky when it comes to choice of which phone to buy since let’s face it, It is the most competitive market in the world when it comes to smartphones. Particularly in the sub ?25000/- price point. And in the last years or so, the entry of brands like Realme and Samsung finally realising the competition and now releasing half decent phones on a budget things were looking good. Until the end of 2019 which in my opinion, manufacturers started releasing phones just for the sake of it... Before you start arguing, let me explain....

[Disclaimer: This is just my raw opinion about the current state of the midrange smartphone market in the last few years. This is purely an opinion based on my observation, so please, don’t get offended]

A bit of a backstory

Until 2015, the mid range market was, let’s say mediocre at best. This was mainly because of, what I like to call labelling brands like Micromax, Lava, Karbonn etc. Who took OEM designs from China and then rebrand them as Indian Phones. But when the Chinese brands, specifically Xiaomi entered the market started to provide excellent value phones that offered more specs than the competition at the same or lower prices. This proved to be big trouble for the “Indian Brands”. And with companies like Oppo and Vivo dominating the offline market with their “Selfie” campaign, this became the final nail in the coffin.

The one brand that was unfazed from this Chinese invasion was Samsung, which was the No.1 smartphone brand back then, and was until the second half of 2018, when Xiaomi took the crown from Samsung. Realizing this Samsung launched the “m series” which became very popular. But it wasn’t enough to stop the path that Xiaomi blazed.

Come to May of 2018, Oppo decided to give Xiaomi a run for their money by releasing their own brand Realme aimed squarely at Xiaomi’s budget brand Redmi (Yep their brand names are easily confused and so are their phones).

Their first phone, the Realme 1 became a huge hit, mainly because it offered the performance of phones that was more than the competition at a much lower price (Seeing a trend here...?). Soon Realme became a key player in the market briefly outrunning Redmi for the No.1 place (Now at No.4 at the time of writing falling behind Xiaomi/Redmi, Samsung and Vivo respectively).

But now, the smartphone market seems very... Different....

There are too many damn phones!!!

From this point onwards I will be focusing only on Xiaomi and Realme as I think they are the worst offenders and in my opinion, the main cause of the overcrowded market in an effort to outdo each other.

Back in mid 2018, Redmi released the Note 5 pro, which captured a huge success as the value proposition was spot on. By then Xiaomi had became the brand that became the go-to brand for the under 20k segment. Late that year, Redmi decided to launch the sequel to the Note 5 Pro, the Note 6 Pro received mixed reactions as the only things that was changed was the notched display and a slight camera bump. And though the Note 7 series was a good jump up, And the Poco F1 was an astounding value, today, the tight competition and the fact that Xiaomi prices their phones competitively, and the myriad of brands that Xiaomi has spun off, i think Xiaomi is struggling to maintain these companies like they were.

Lets take an example , This year, Redmi released the Note 9 pro which received a warm welcome, but almost 2 months after, they released the Poco M2 Pro, which.... Well... let the images and the spec-sheet speak for themselves.

A s you can see, the 2 are indistinguishable, And the weird thing is, this isn’t the first time that they’re doing this (search for Redmi K30 and Poco X2). This kind of re-branding in my opinion, is a pointless decision as this makes the brands unrecognizable and most importantly, dilutes the brand. Case in point, Poco, now has gone from being the flagship killer brand to a vanilla midrange brand that is the same as the other phones out there.

But in my opinion, the worst offender here is Realme, as whilst Redmi separates it’s phones among different brands, Realme launches the same phones in the same brand. Case in point, the Realme 6 pro and the Realme 7 pro which hark back to the Redmi note 5 pro vs Note 6 pro.

I mean, the inclusion of 65w fast charging is useful, don’t get me wrong. But that fast of a charging means more heat and faster battery degradation over the long term. And let’s face it the 30w charging in the 6 pro is more than enough for 90% of the users out there.

Another example is the Narzo 20 pro vs the Realme 7.

Yes, the Realme 7 has a 64 megapixel camera but frankly, for most of the time, this does not make a difference for the average consumer. And at the same price, the differentiating factor is the design which in this case, is also almost identical. I mean, what’s happening here!!!

My Speculation

The one reason I think this is going on is that I feel that brands nowadays have to constantly release new products to maintain at the top of the headlines and to create hype... And to be honest I would say about three quarters of the cost goes to the branding and the marketing rather than the actual development of the phone as they’ll just rebrand the one that they already have. Now I’ll admit, They’re rebranding from an already good baseline, but the gains from going from one brand to the other are negligible almost all of the time.

Add to that the increase in the price of components, the current situation of 2020 among a load of other reasons, brands find it easier to rebrand a phone and sell it or mash up a new phone from their existing inventory of parts rather than develop a new phone altogether. This way less money goes to R&D and more onto profit. And as a business, profit is their end goal after all, and the profit margins on these phones are quite slim anyway.

A Brief Rant(As if the above wasn’t enough) and Conclusion

Don’t get me wrong... I’m all in for competition as in the end, the consumers are the winner, and I like it. But the competition has become so fierce in the last couple of years that the actual tangible gain that you get going from one phone to another at a given price point has now become less and less obvious.

And this poses quite a few problems.

For one, too many phones on the same price point confuses the consumer. I mean Realme is selling almost 5 phones in the sub 15k segment which are all close enough that it doesn't make a difference. And Poco and Redmi have gone to the point where they’re selling identical phones at identical prices... I mean, Why?!

Secondly although these brands “promise” timely updates with this many phones to support you’d be lucky when you phone gets further support past the one year mark.

It’s also making the job of reviewers difficult as there are one too many phones that are exactly the same, that it gets harder to recommend a phone from even the same brand....

So my request to any phone manufacturers who would read this (which most likely won’t happen) stop releasing identical phones just for the sake of it, and spend your resources on actually improving your phones to the point where the user gets a tangible and justifiable gain in the experience when switching/upgrading from one phone to another.

That’s been my rant... Thank you for sticking with me for this long and If I've missed something or have got anything wrong, do let me know. Until then stay safe an have a great time.