Lava’s route from featurephone dominance to significant smartphone player
Lava’s route from featurephone dominance to significant smartphone player. Lava, an Indian phone manufacturer, is presently active in more than 40 countries and aims to challenge the dominance of Chinese manufacturers in the Indian market.
We had a chance to meet with Mr. Tejinder Singh, the Product Head at Lava International, to discuss the state of the business and where it aims to go in the future. Mr. Singh discussed the improvements offered to customers by Lava and the difficulties the company experiences as an Indian company. Down below, you’ll find the complete transcript of the interview.
Lava’s route from featurephone dominance to significant smartphone player.
Two types exist. First, in the feature phone market, we are the number two company in India and the third company worldwide. The second is smartphones, where our market share has been expanding steadily. We have about a 3% share of the market where we compete.
And what we’ve done over the last several years is continually spending in R&D to build bespoke features and deliver the ideal software experience to users. As a species, we have a long way to go before we reach the pinnacle of smartphone development.
There used to be a stigma attached to Indian brands, with the belief that once the equipment was sold, the customer was forgotten. As a result, we put forth a lot of effort to achieve it. Consistent software updates, including security patches, are released once per year for two years after a major Android upgrade.
In terms of market share and absolute numbers, where does Lava now stand in the Indian smartphone industry and the phone market as a whole?
So we’ve put in effort in that regard, and the fruits of our labor are beginning to show. We anticipate this to be a protracted process during which we’ll need to maintain a high standard of quality in both our hardware and our software; only then will we see a significant increase in our smartphone market share.
And if I need to offer you a concrete example, let me tell you about the latest Android update we released for our flagship model, the Agni. We provide security updates every quarter, and we’re also working on some new, unique features.
We just released the Blaze 5G, and unlike rival devices, it can play YouTube videos in the background without a YouTube Premium membership. We also developed the idea of MyZ, which allows for personalization in both the hardware and the software.
If you buy a smartphone with 2GB of RAM but later decide you want a device with 3GB of RAM, you may do it using the ZUp program. We must continually commit to developing new hardware and updating existing software to achieve our goal. The first step of the voyage has been taken. Thus there are already some outcomes. As we continue to invest money into research and development and expand our R&D capacities, we expect to resolve the remaining issues by the following year.
Tell me about some of Lava’s most ground-breaking technological contributions; specifically, highlight those that set you apart from the competition. When will we know what the future holds?
It’s essential to avoid making changes to make them. Our ideal consumer is between 18 and 24, and this demographic has been carefully established. It’s safe to assume he’s a male student, and we’ve designed all of our products with him in mind. According to our market analysis, although other music apps allow background listening, they provide a far smaller music library. Thus, after consulting with R&D, we developed YouTube’s ability to play videos in the background.
Similarly, many users have requested a feature not included in the current version of Google’s operating system: the ability to record calls while keeping the caller’s identity concealed. We then met with our research and development department to figure out how to implement this on our mobile devices. MyZ and ZUp are two more prominent features with their origins in user input.
Customers wished they could choose the optimal setup without purchasing optional extras. And we came up with this idea where you can pick and choose the parts that interest you. With that in mind, you may get a device with 6GB RAM and an 8MP camera. Z’s whole premise thus is as follows. Our previous technological advancements will be discussed.
Looking forward, we’ve been steadily adding talent from the most prestigious academic institutions to our consumer research team. Members of the product team have access to customer feedback. We are investing extensively in R&D expansion to ensure that we can provide innovations, with a primary emphasis on satisfying the most pressing needs of smartphone customers in the areas of performance and camera quality.
In the next period, you will witness advancements connected to the main demands of the customers of smartphones, which are performance and photography. I need to find out the full details of the innovations that are working in progress. Several of our offerings will be firsts in the market for these customers. I’m referring to the demographic with a median income of less than $150 per year.
