One of China’s leading mobile brand, ForMe Mobiles has made its entry in to Indian market with five dual SIM models priced between Rs 4,000 and Rs 5,000. The company, which launched the handsets for the South Indian market, plans to launch two new models every month.
ForMe Communications Technology, which owns ForMe brand, has its headquarters and manufacturing unit in Meital Industrial Park in Shenzhen, China, and produces 11.5 million sets annually. Its parent company, Yidalong, is engaged in the mother board business since 2002.
Addressing presspersons here Jiang Delong, founder of ForMe, hoped that with reasonable price of the product, the company can make a dent in the market.
The company’s sales and marketing affair will be handled by Peace Telecom India, a subsidiary of Peace Telecom, a trading company based in Hong Kong. Cricketer Murali Vijay, the brand ambassador of ForMe mobiles in India, unveiled the mobile phones in Chennai.
Abdul Gaffar, director, Peace Telecom India, said the Indian subsidiary planned to sell five million sets in two years.
GFive, another Chinese company, has reached number three spot in the Indian market. According to IDC, this has kind of renewed the interest of Chinese players to enter the Indian market directly. Other than these two players, Indian handset market is dominated by rebranded Chinese phones sold by Indian companies or by MNC brands like Nokia and Samsung.
Will more Chinese firms come to India directly?
Certainly, but we do not expect too many company trying to get direct foot hold as the current arrangement of selling rebranded phones works in both Chinese and Indian firms as it reduces complexity of marketing for Chinese firms which are basically manufacturing companies for Indian companies, which are in turn basically marketing companies.