Understanding the China Mobiles movement in India
Introducing our Guest ,Amit Nayak, CEO, GEEK IT STORES .
Chinese mobile phones are flooding the indian mobile market and are giving tough competition to reputed brands.
But they have also been hitting the headlines due to poor quality or due absence of IMEI number.
Amit will clear your doubts regarding chinese mobile phones.
Are you a china mobile customer?? Are you using Chinese mobile? Are you safe using a such a phone ,
from health & legal point of view!! Lots & lots of queries and no answers, either with the mobile retailers, nor the industry tech pundits or mobile specialists.
I will give you a basic overview, as I am a legal manufacturer in China and have retail operations in India.
First of all, one needs to understand the origins of these China mobiles, there are 3 types of china mobile manufacturers.
1. Home based assemblers – Small time technicians buy mobile spare parts from “recycle centers” and configure chipset with open source firmware via laptop, using “hand-made”” mobile body” or shells. These shells (mobile body) are made by pouring either molten plastic in “dies” or shapes designed. Here there is no IMEI ( only fake stickers)
2. Small factories assemblers: These factories buy refurbished “china mobiles” and they source chipset & firmware from Taiwan in bulk and sell only in Chinese market locally ( they don’t export to India), again these factories use fake IMEI.
3. Big Branded Factories: These are the top players in China having workforce over 5000+and have manufacturing contracts with Nokia, Samsung,LG,Iphone. For example Foxconn is world`s largest mobile phone manufacturer.
The Chinese mobile industry consumption in India is approx~30,000 crores alone, and growing rapidly.
The IMEI issue is very plain open & shut case; Chinese manufacturers of all formats have to pay a license fee for getting a sequence of IMEI numbers. They don’t spend money to get the license and here in India we get duplicate IMEI numbers or forged IMEI.
Duplicate IMEI numbers happen in branded products for example, a Nokia selling in Indian grey market is hi-end “counterfeit” copy (NOT copy phone). These phones are actually from the contracted manufacturers of branded phones, who release the phones in market through smuggling network globally.
That is why, the grey market will offer you lower rates than branded stores, as it is counterfeit copy with duplicate IMEI. Margins in such phones are upto 3000 INR per handset, compared to 200/- INR to authorized retailers.
As a customer, Indians need to understand that
1. China is NOT to be blamed for the quality , or SAR issue or IMEI numbers, any person who wishes to import from China , will be presented a quality range, example you can buy a phone as low as from Rs: 500 to Rs: 15,00,000 (Vertu). It is upto to the importer.
2. Indian Importers bring mobile phones which are actually made by small time technicians, our Indian importers are not concerned with the quality, type or feature such as TV,MP3,Bluetooth or 2 sim,3 sim. They are only concerned with “price”. They will haggle a price with these small time players and import to India under fake IEC( Import export) code.
“this is the major problem, which the government of India needs to tackle, so Indian importers who import low quality & fake IMEI, need to banned in India and also the customers should understand that all mobiles on the planet earth , let it be any brand are exclusively , manufactured in China”
So as a customer what you need to do:
1. Demand a bill of sale from your china mobile vendor with IMEI mentioned
2. Register your IMEI from IMEIDATA.com website
3. Buy higher quality china mobiles from branded players.
If you any specific queries, you can email ammeetnayak@geekitstores.in