Is a boycott really the answer?
The irony of the boycott is especially ripe considering that among the top five smartphone brands in the country – the fastest growing mobile market – four places are occupied by a Chinese brands.
According to a May 2020 report by Counterpoint Research, in Q1 2020, Xiaomi had the highest market share of 30 percent in the Indian smartphone market, Vivo ranks second occupying 17 percent of the market, Samsung is at number three with 16 percent. Places fourth and fifth are also occupied by Chinese brands Realme and Oppo with 14 and 12 percent market share, respectively.
For the uninitiated, Vivo, Realme, Oppo, OnePlus are all owned by BBK Electronics, which is a Chinese MNC specialising in electronics. Xiaomi is also a Beijing-based company. No India-born brand ranks in the top smartphone sellers list.
However, for feature phone market share in Q1 2020, Lava and Micromax did make the cut to the second and fifth position, respectively.
It’s not just the pricing that makes the Chinese smartphone brands attractive in India – they have a rising graph when it comes to technology, which cannot be ignored. From being famous for just being a mass producer back in the 1970s, China quickly grew into principal designers for various technologies. For instance, China leads lithium-ion battery production with a 73 percent global manufacturing capacity share, followed by the US, far behind with 12 percent of global capacity.
Also, how do you really cut off ties with a particular country’s product in a globalised world, where a chip by Intel – an American tech company headquartered in California – is designed in China, manufactured in Taiwan, it’s PCB is assembled in Malaysia before going back to Silicon Valley?
While India has been pushing for local manufacturing of most products sold in the country, it is impossible – particularly in electronics – to pluck out every involvement of a Chinese company from the line of local production.
If this is the future we want, we must prepare ourselves for a very different experience as consumers in India. We may have to make peace with the vagaries of quality, or with sky-high prices for the next Apple iPhone or Samsung Galaxy flagship.
Kolkata: The nationwide clamour for boycott of Chinese goods is getting louder amid the Ladakh face-off, with traders urging the Centre to direct e-commerce firms to restrict the sale of items from the Dragonland, which imports products worth USD 74 billion to India annually.
Of the total import from China, retail traders sell goods worth around USD 17 billion, mostly comprising toys, household items, mobiles, electric and electronic goods and cosmetics among other things, which could possibly be replaced by Indian products, a national trading body said.
