Rank 4: A determined top 5 in Smartphones in India- VIVO

Vivo is another Chinese smartphone maker brand that entered India a couple of years ago, focusing at the mid to premium range of the opportunity. Vivo, which is also the country’s third largest smartphone brand by shipment share, registered a whopping135% growth in revenues to cross the Rs 10,000 crore milestone in less than four years of its entry into the country. It posted India sales of Rs 13,520Crore in the fiscal ending March 2018, compared with Rs 5,749Crore in 2016-17.

Vivo India did a trade channel correction last year reducing the number of exclusive stores and number of outlets selling its handsets, clamping down on indiscriminate expansion, reduced trade margin and decided to focus on online sales.

Vivo has also now localising its India team which was earlier mostly driven by Chinese expats. Vivo is also planning to launch a new brand exclusively for online like Oppo launched Realme and Xiaomi introduced Pocowhich will further drive its India sales. Like these two brands, Vivo’s upcoming online exclusive brand will be specifically focused with an aggressive pricing. Vivo’s online foray last fiscal helped the brand to gain sales and this strategy will help it to maintain growth this fiscal too.

Vivo shipments have also increased sequentially last quarter driven by new launches, celebrity endorsement and aggressive campaign around the IPL cricket tournament, 2018. Vivo recently signed film star Aamir Khan as the brand ambassador and also announced additional investment of Rs 200 Crore to expand its Greater Noida plant.

Vivo has been on a launching spree recently. After launching the Vivo NEX and Vivo Y83 in August 2018, the company has now launched the V11 Pro. The V11 Pro is the successor to the Vivo V9 launched last year and is in direct competition to Oppo’s latest launch, the Oppo F9 Pro.Vivo V11 Pro is the Vivo’s first smartphone with a new style of the notch that is called as a Halo Full View Display which gives a large 6.4-inch super amoled screen in 19.5:9 aspect ratio. This is also the first smartphone in the V series to come with an in-display fingerprint scanner. Priced at 25,990; it is the cheapest smartphone promoting this feature.

Vivo compared to its closest rival Oppo, has been able to make a comeback and is today distinctively positioned against Oppo. This makes the brand a very strong contender among the challenger brands and could emerge as the default 3rd ranking brand in Smartphones in India.

The brand continues to enjoy a strong positioning among youth. With its attempt to fix up the online vacuum, the outlook for the company looks even positive. Vivo will continue to strengthen its position in 10-35,000 Smartphone price segment primarily mid to premium opportunities of the Smartphone.