Gionee breaks Chinese jinx: The Mobile Indian survey

In March 2013, a new player from China, Gionee, entered the already crowded Indian handset market. Like many brands from its home country, it faced the stigma of being a Chinese brand, which many mobile phone consumers equated with ‘cheap’. This is patently unfair since even the world’s most premium handset brands depend heavily on manufacturing out of China. Perceptions may be changing. Gionee’s relentless efforts are bearing fruit as, for the first time, one of its handsets – eLife E3 – has made it to the No 1 spot of The Mobile Indian’s most searched Handset Hotlist for November 2013.

Gionee Elife E3 has beaten the likes of Samsung Galaxy Core, Sony Xperia C, and Micromax Canvas Turbo to come out on top.

Handset Hotlist is a monthly survey of The Mobile Indian (TMI) in which the online preferences of over one million people who visited the website (www.themobileindian.com) in any month are analysed.

Commenting on the survey, a spokesperson of The Mobile Indian, said, “In the first quarter of 2013, when Gionee entered the Indian market it was perceived to be just another Chinese brand which would fight on price. However, over the past nine months it has come up with an interesting line-up of products which are being received well in terms of both specifications and design.”

Gionee has been launching models at regular intervals and hasn’t held back on advertising either. It has been using television and print advertising extensively in recent months.

The surprise in this month’s Handset Hotlist doesn’t end with Gionee. The second most searched model in November was Intex Aqua i6. Though Intex handsets have made it to the Hotlist in the past, they have never been anywhere near the top. This time round it looks like brand ambassador Farhan Akhtar and better visibility for the Aqua series of smartphones have helped the company in garnering high consumer interest.

As per the Handset Hotlist survey, out of 25 most searched mobile phones on The Mobile Indian, 13 handsets were from Indian brands and the rest were international. Also, 10 of these Indian models had cameras with a Resolution of 8 Megapixel or more.

Of the 25 most searched handsets, six were from Samsung, five from Micromax, three from Xolo, two each from Nokia, Sony, HTC and Gionee, and one each from Karbonn, Intex and iBerry.

As for Relative Score, a metric that helps determine a phone’s overall score in relation to its competitors, the No 1, Gionee, stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Intex Aqua i6 was followed closely by Samsung Galaxy Win (Quattro) at No 3. The competition got really fierce between No 8 and No 25, with the top and the bottom in that group being separated by merely 10 percentage points.