my gut feeling after spending a lot of time in India is I don’t see how a lot of people will be able to afford a $700 phone.
Oh, hundreds of millions won’t be able to. I have spent a lot of time in India too, and the obvious throngs of desperately poor people dominate the view.
BUT, at least 100 million (probably more now, as these data are at least 15 years old) will easily be able to afford one.
India’s middle class back at the turn of the century consisted of over 100 million people with liquid assets over $100,000. That number is undoubtedly much higher today, given the rapid expansion of high wage earners in India since then.
This is the market for smart phones. Everybody in India has a cell phone, even the maids and “rickshaw wallas”. Smart phone penetration is much lower, and limited to the middle and upper classes. But that is still a LOT of people.
Tiptree, Fool One guide, married to a cute Indian gal.
Assume this may bode well for SWKS… as long as they are in Huawei and Lenovo phones… we’ll know for sure tomorrow if managements suggestions are in fact reality.
Chinese smartphone unit sales growing faster than Apple, Samsung: IDC
Smartphone sales growth grew moderately over the holiday quarter with the big gains not from Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.27% or Samsung 005930, -1.79% but from Huawei 002502, -7.67% and Lenovo 0992, +1.62% according to figures from International Data Corp. Sales of smartphones rose 5.7% to 377.8 million units in the fourth quarter compared with a year ago, IDC said. Of those unit sales, Apple sold 0.4% more at 74.8 million, while Samsung sold 14% more at 85.6 million units. On the other hand, unit sales from Huawei jumped 37% to 32.4 million units, and Lenovo sales surged 43.6% to 20.2 million units, according to IDC.
