Smartphone trends in 2014

Hitesh Shah, director, channel sales, BlackBerry India talks about the smartphone trends in 2014

2013 has been a landmark year for the smartphone industry in more ways than one. To begin with, smartphone sales grew faster than feature phone sales in India indicating that the market is steadily moving up the value chain. In line with this, we've seen the rise of the ‘phablet', innovative customer schemes as well as a consumer focus on services. That said, this has posed something of a challenge to the channel community that is the conduit to market for smartphone manufacturers. It's a paradigm shift in a country that was cost conscious, focused on features such as radio and SMS and on primarily pre-paid plans. 

Let's look into each of these aspects and assess the impact they have had on the distribution channel dynamic.

Rise of the phablets
When it came to smartphone sales, channel partners and distributors have been focused on features such as the camera, data capabilities such as email and instant messaging to make a sale. As phablets become more mainstream and operating systems more sophisticated, they've had to invest time becoming familiar with this new form factor and what it is capable of. What this means is that in 2014, your local phone retailer will be talking of instagram, box, dropbox, productivity apps, fun apps, multimedia, gaming and entertainment on the go when asked about the latest smartphones in his store.

Consumer schemes and incentives
This is by far the most significant development from a channel community standpoint given its ability to help move inventory, increase sales as well as develop demand for high-end and high-margin devices. From an end-consumer perspective, it's created the opportunity to own aspirational smartphones.

Services playThe pitch has changed significantly in the smartphone industry. Today it's less about hardware and more about the services it bundles in. So in additional to what large form factors provide, what you will also hear the channel use as USPs of various devices is the apps and services that come bundled with it. 

All this aside, what I think will really define 2014 is the fact that convergence will finally become a reality and trends like machine-to-machine and NFC will start changing the battle-turf significantly. It will mark a new phase of intensive knowledge development within the channel where the pitch to sell will change from not what a device is capable of in isolation but what it can do in conjunction with a range of consumer durables and electronics.

2014 will be about being connected in more ways than one and it will be interesting to work with the channel community to begin to make it a reality.