Navkendar Singh from IDC joined us for an interesting discussion on the coverage of smartphones brands and the impact of the demonetisation event in India. We covered the profile of the typical India smartphone user and their usage patterns. We discussed Apple, the Asian OEM brands from China to Korea and local Indian brands and how they are competing in a price sensitive & hyper competitive Indian market. In the same conversation, we examined the recent demonetisation event in India and its implications to the growth of digital payments across India.

Here are the interesting show notes and links to the discussion (with time-stamps included):

Navkendar Singh, Technology Analyst for IDC India (@navkendar_IDC, LinkedIn) [0:44]

How did you start your career? [1:05]
What is your current role and coverage for IDC India? [1:35]
In your career journey, what are the interesting career lessons learnt? [2:38]

Smartphones in India [4:25]

What is the normal India smartphone user like? [4:45]
Does the Indian customer use the local apps pre-loaded or downloading from the app store, for example, Flipkart, Paytm and Ola? [6:50]
How do you collect data in getting the market share of the India smartphone market? [8:08]
Which are the top 5 smartphone brands in India? [10:19]
How are Indian users divided between iOS and Android? How do they access the mobile apps? 97% of the Indian market is Android and iOS has only less than 2% market share. [11:04]
How is Apple being perceived in India? [12:19]
Will the market share of Apple increase with them starting to manufacture in India? [14:29]
How are the Asian OEMs, predominantly Chinese ones for example Xiaomi and Huawei or Samsung entering India? How are they perceived by the Indian customers? [16:28]
Given Xiaomi is just behind Samsung in market share (Samsung: 25%, Xiaomi 9%), can they grow further with their different way of acquiring customers in India? [19:10]
How about India local brands for example, Micromax? Are they able to gain the market share with iPhone, Chinese & Korean android phones flooding the Indian market? [20:58]

Demonetisation In India [22:50]

Can you narrate what actually happened that led to the Indian government starting the demonetization movement? [23:12]
What led the government into taking this action in such a hasty manner? [25:03]  
How are customers or citizens navigate with the lack of cash in the market? Are they resorting to technology to solve the issue? [26:22]
Which of the mobile wallets have benefitted from the most from this event? Paytm has managed to acquire 100m more users after the event. [28:01]
How does connectivity in India structured with 2G, 3G or 4G/LTE? [30:22]
Does this cause an significant impact to the adoption of digital payments within India? [31:26]

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