So 2022 has started, and we have already seen a lot of smartphone launches from budget to mid-range to the flagship. This is something serious. Smartphone companies innovate, and there's a lot of competition in the Indian market, and match is always good for consumers. It brings the price down, but sometimes, brands pull up some marketing gimmicks in so many phone launches.
So this 2022, here are 4 solid marketing gimmicks by smartphone brands.
Number 4
Let's start from the least to the worst, like remember when apple removed the charger from the box, citing environmental concerns. Samsung and Xiaomi removed the charger from their flagship phones, but those are flagship, so that's fine. But Samsung is removing chargers from their M, A, and F series phone. The box has gotten slimmer with no charger inside. Basically, most Samsung phones you buy in 2022 will not have a charger now that's problematic, and not just Samsung, Realme skipping on the charger for the budget Realme Narzo 50a. So now here's the deal whenever you buy a flagship phone like iPhone, Samsung, or Pixel for suppose, say 80,000 rupees, you can add 2000 more and get a charger but let's take the same scenario in the budget you buy Samsung F23 for 15,999 rupees and put 2000 more for a charger which is big money for people buying budget phones so now at 17,999 rupees you get a Samsung M33 for the same price and for a second let's just ignore all of that let's take the logic that you already have a charger of your last phone so can you fast charge a Realme phone with a Samsung charger or can you fast charge a Samsung phone with a Realme charger. No, of course, you'll need a new charger, so we want to say that even if the brand assumes that you have an extra charger, chances are that it's from a different brand, so you won't be able to fast charge your phone anyways. Overall the point is Samsung is doing it now. Every other company will now do it next year if this trend works. We'll just request brands to think about it and not remove chargers from budget phones.
Number 3
Android 11 in 2022, So Samsung was the first Android company to announce 3 years of software updates and 4 years of security updates. Now they have pushed it to 4 years of android updates and since it is working for them, every company is now promising software updates but then you would be like what's wrong with that? Well, nothing actually, it's great to actually know how long your phone will get updated but there are still companies who launch phones with Android 11 in the box. A very recent example was the OnePlus 9RT, it is Oxygen OS 11 merged with Color OS 11. yes, it's android 11 right out of the box. OnePlus promised 3 years of android updates but those 3 years will count as android 12 android 13 and android 14 whereas if the phone came with android 12 right out of the box, you would have got android 13, android 14, and android 15, and not just OnePlus, a lot of companies are still launching phones with android 11 in 2022 and some are still sending android 11 updates. So eos of the update is good but there has to be a deadline to when will you update existing phones like android 13 beta was released, we think Google should step in and make a decision that this is the deadline, phones launching beyond this point has to have the latest android update like recently Google announced that Android apps not updated in 2 years will be restricted in Google Play Store. Great, do that to the phone companies as well.
Number 2
The price hike, everything around you from petrol to maggie is having a price hike because of inflation and so you would have seen smartphones in 2022 have also been costly but all phones launched in early 2022 somewhere around 70 smartphones as of now be it budget or flagship. This is the first time all of them have bank offers for all smartphones be it Redmi, Realme, Motorola and even Samsung had an instant bank discount of 1500 or 2000 from selected banks. In fact, if you visit the smartphone website the price return itself is including bank offers with a small asterisk for terms and conditions. Now, we do understand everything is getting costly, and prices have to be hiked but when inflation comes down will the prices of smartphones go low?
Number 1
Rebranding with a price cut, we know there is a chip shortage in smartphones you can clearly see it which brings us to number one rebranding. There are many examples like Vivo T1 and iQOO Z6 exact phones, POCO X4 Pro, and Redmi Note 11 Pro, plus the only change was the 108-megapixel camera. First, one phone is launched and then the rebranded phone just comes after a month with a slight price cut so what about the people who bought the first phone should we always wait for the rebrand to launch to get the best price for a smartphone? and if not that, too many smartphones launch under one name like if we tell you to buy Realme 9 which Realme 9 should you buy? Realme 9 4G, Realme 9 5G, Realme 9SC Realme 9 Pro, Realme 9 Pro Plus 5G.
So the problems in the smartphone industry, ways in which smartphone manufacturers are tricking you. How do we save ourselves from it? Well this price hike everything, if you don't want the latest and the greatest phone, 2021 phones are selling for discounts and now are more value for money like Samsung's own A52s, is selling for 30,999 which was launched for 35,999, 5000 discounts same Samsung S20 FE is selling for 34,492 which launched for 45,999 then Realme GT Neo 2 Realme GT Master Edition, you can buy those phones and the second thing to do is awareness, the more you know, the more data you have, the better decisions you can make. That's all for this post stay tuned to CERadar for more such updates.
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