An indian woman speaks on her mobile phone in a slum area on the banks of the heavily polluted Cooum river in Chennai, India, on March 14 2012. Photo: CFP

A South China smartphone maker unknown to most Chinese ranks No.3 in India.

 

Shenzhen-based handset maker G'five International on July 16 launched five new Android-based smartphones for about 7,000 rupees ($127) each on the Indian market.

 

The company also plans to in­troduce another 42 types of smart­phones on the Indian market by the first quarter of 2013.

G'five ranks third on the Indian smartphone market with a 5 percent share after Nokia and Samsung, according to statistics from research firm Gartner.

 

The company sells about 26 million handsets to Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa.

 

In the first half of the year, the company nudged into the world's top 10 handset makers in terms of shipments, according to Gartner.

 

"Now we are also eyeing the market in countries such as Pakistan, Ban­gladesh, Iran as well as some African countries where there are less legal threats from global handset makers," the company told the Global Times in an e-mailed statement.

 

Indian flair

 

G'five was founded in 2003 as a producer of cellphone parts, then developed into an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) producing hand­sets for other brands.

 

The high-tech firm started its own brand G'five in 2008.

 

From the outset, G'five focused on the overseas market. Enter­ing the Indian market in 2008, its products gained popular­ity quickly for their sensitivity to Indian consumer needs.

 

Given that the middle- and low-end hand­sets still dominate the Indian market, the company mainly pro­vided devices priced at under $50 at the begin­ning.

 

But the brand is not only competi­tive in price. As there is no stable supply of electric­ity in some parts of India, G'five designed handsets with a battery life as long as 30 days. Its handsets could also be powered by regular batteries in an emergency.

 

G'five became the very first handset vendor to sell dual-SIM devices in India back in 2010.

 

The company boasts that it can pro­duce phones tailor-made for the chang­ing Indian market in under 40 days.

 

For example, in one G'five phone there is a pre-installed application that translates the Koran, the holy book of Islam, into 29 languages.

"The company chose the right market strategy from the beginning. If it had targeted the domestic market in the first place, it would face very fierce competition," Ji Chendong, a senior IT consultant with KPMG, told the Global Times.

 

G'five is the firstever company to introduce four-SIM card handsets to the Indian market.

 

"The company had produced the right product for the right demograph­ic group," Ji said.

 

Ji noted the company's experience as an OEM manufacturer also helped it gain the technology to fuel its development.

 

"G'five has a good relationship with Indian channels. The company understands local needs and it also invested in marketing and branding which helped its sales," CK Lu, a Taiwan-based analyst with Gartner, told the Global Times.

 

Li Yi, secretary-general of the China Mobile Internet Industry Alliance, told the Global Times that G'five had used the same distribution channel as Nokia when it entered the Indian mar­ket, which also helped its expansion.

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Don't call me copycat

 

As G'five further expanded over­seas, the company paid increasing attention to brand recognition as well as technology innovation.

 

Zhang Wenxue, president of G'five, wrote on a microblog post that "Made in China" does not necessarily mean copycat products, and that China can also produce high-quality handsets of its own.

 

"The G'five product is of a decent quality, and can closely meet the needs of the Indian market," said Li of the China Mobile Internet Industry Alliance, "but the company still has problems."

 

Li said that G'five relies too much on following other brands' design and technology.

 

"In order to completely drop the copycat title, core technology innova­tion is a must," he said.

 

Chinese smartphone brand Ginonee began with OEM handsets and has grown into a brand that claims a 4.8 percent share of the Chinese domestic smartphone market, ranking sixth, according to statistics from Analy­sys International.

 

Homegrown hand­set maker Coolpad owns 4.7 percent of the Chinese market, even bigger than Apple Inc's 3 percent and Mo­torola's 2.5 percent.

 

The success of brands like Coolpad, Li noted, depends on constant investment in tech­nology innovation.

 

G'five has been involved in copyright disputes as its products too closely resemble those of Nokia and Motorola.

 

After Nokia sued G'five in 2011, an Indian court issued a restraining order that forbade G'five products from en­tering India for half a month, leading to millions in losses.

 

"G'five still lags far behind leading handset makers in terms of technolog­ical innovation as well as design," said Ji of KPMG. "It should invest more in research and development in the fu­ture in order to survive in the sector."

 

ZTE and Huawei, which also have a strong presence on the overseas market, should also be cautious about copyright issues, he warned.

 

Come back to the motherland

 

With a foothold secured on the overseas market, the company is now planning to hit the Chinese domestic market, the world's largest for smart­phones.

 

G'five has already started cooperat­ing with smartphone distributors in provinces including Sichuan, Jiangsu and Zhejiang, and it is cooperating with major appliance sellers Suning and Gome in both online and offline sales, the company told the Global Times via an e-mailed statement.

 

On the domestic market, the company will continue to focus on smartphones in the lower to mid price range, it said.

 

G'five must explore the domestic market, the experts agreed.

 

"Competition in the Southeast Asian market is getting tougher. G'five's success can also be easily cop­ied by other handset makers," said Li of the China Mobile Internet Industry Alliance.

 

The company faces competition from other white-box vendors as well as big names such as Nokia on the Indian market.

 

In the first quarter of this year, G'five had 5 percent of the market in India, compared with nearly 10 per­cent in the fourth quarter in 2011.

 

Experts noted the company also faces tough times ahead on the satu­rated Chinese market, which has little room for newcomers.

"I think G'five will find it difficult to grow in the future as both China and India markets are tough," said CK Lu of Gartner.

 

"Also, expanding means the com­pany is even more vulnerable to legal action on patents from other global companies."