Realme on Thursday said it has ensured that the global chipset supply shortage does not impact its sales during the upcoming festive season in India and expressed confidence in closing the year with its smartphone sales at around 24-27 million units.
The company, which competes with players like Xiaomi and Samsung, is also exploring local manufacturing of its recently launched notebooks and tablet PCs in the country.
“Chip shortage is a global phenomenon. We have already procured chipsets and for next year also, we have already started planning to make sure that we do not face any chip shortages in the India market. So we have completely made sure that there’s no shortage during the festive season from Realme,” Realme Vice President and India and Europe Chief Executive Officer Madhav Sheth told PTI.
He added that the company is committed to bring in devices across various price points, featuring the best chipsets.
Semiconductors play a crucial role in everything, right from computers to appliances, communication devices, transportation systems to critical infrastructure. Trends like remote work and study-from-home during the COVID-19 pandemic led to an explosive growth in semiconductor demand that has placed huge strain on global supply chains around the world.
“There is an acute shortage, but we are trying to make sure that India is never facing this particular shortage because India will always be a focus market from the global perspective for Realme. It normally depends on the brand, its perspective and focus on a country,” Sheth said.
He added that the company is focussed on bringing the best products to the Indian consumers .
“We will continue with our philosophy of bringing high and mid-range chipsets or industry-first chipsets to consumers. People should get more options at different price points…we are aiming to achieve more than 6 million units of smartphone sales in September-October in the festive season,” he said.
Sheth said the company is looking at its smartphone sales in India growing from 19 million in 2020 to 24-27 million units in 2021.
Smartphone shipment in India grew by 82 per cent in the June 2021 quarter to reach over 33 million units, according to data from research firm Counterpoint. In terms of market share, Xiaomi (including POCO) led the tally with 28.4 per cent, followed by Samsung (17.7 per cent), Vivo (15.1 per cent), Realme (14.6 per cent) and Oppo (10.4 per cent).
Realme has been expanding its product portfolio in India with the addition of smart TVs, audio and wearables. It recently added laptops and announced the launch of tablet PCs on Thursday.
“I think the tablet category is growing globally after this pandemic at a very high pace and the main reason is edtech. Right now, the tablet segment is lacking choices at a particular price segment, so we wanted to make sure that we bring more choices to users,” Sheth said.
He noted that smart TVs, smart audio, wearables, laptops and tablets are high-value categories.
These are new categories and are currently contributing around 15-20 per cent, and the expectation is that this will be around 30-35 per cent next year.
Sheth said the laptops are currently being imported but the company is in talks with three partners and expects to commence local manufacturing by the end of this year.
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Tablets will also be manufactured in India very soon as well, he added.
Realme on Thursday launched its Realme Pad – its tablet PC priced at Rs 13,999. It features MediaTek Helio G80 gaming processor, 10.4-inch display, 7100mAh battery and 8MP front camera. It will have three storage variants with 3GB/4GB RAM and 32GB/64GB memory. The company also launched bluetooth speakers.
Besides, Realme has also expanded its 5G smartphone range with the addition of Realme 8s 5G (featuring MediaTek Dimensity 810 5G processor) and realme 8i with MediaTek Helio G96 Processor. These are priced at Rs 13,999 onwards.
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