REWIRING THE CIRCUIT
Ashok Jana, 40, a driver in New Delhi, spent much of his spare time at work watching Bollywood films and news videos on his Xiaomi phone. Since the Covid outbreak, however, the phone has become a lifeline, allowing him to make daily video calls to his family in West Bengal.
Like Jana, hundreds of thousands of Indians today use Chinese smartphones. There is a wide array on offer, and even the high-end variants cost a fraction of comparable models from other big-name brands. In other words, they offer good value for money. Indeed, Chinese brands have made deep inroads into the $8 billion (Rs 604 billion) Indian smartphone market, with Chinese companies such as Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus holding a combined market share of over 66 per cent (Q1 2019 estimate), according to Counterpoint Research, a global industry analysis firm. Xiaomi leads
