Over the last five years Counterpoint Research has built a solid quantitative database of the market, and competitive and product performance metrics in the mobile and IoT industry sectors, complemented with in-depth insights answering the ‘whys?’ and ‘so whats?’ behind these datapoints. However, after closely tracking the supply chains, OEMs and channels we believe it is more and more important for every professional to better understand the demand-side trends.

We are therefore delighted to announce that Counterpoint’s rockstar team has launched a new program, called Consumer Lens, that will help clients understand the consumer’s perspective across different markets, channels and product categories.

We are publishing a series of insight reports from our primary research across different geographic markets that touches on key topics around, channels, product categories, pain points, pricing and more. These reports will be published regularly under this program. Each report will have a huge number of data points and insights to support operational decision-making in areas such as product design, portfolio analysis, marketing and other critical areas.

For example: We conducted a study in the world’s second largest mobile market, India, to understand the changing consumer attitudes, preferences and usage. We have been able to analyze more than 200 key insights from our primary surveys. A few highlights include:

Insight 1: Indian consumers are looking to pay more for their next phone and the sweet spot has moved from INR8K-12K to INR15K and more in just a year. This helps OEMs to target where the consumers are looking to spend more and in which price band their next product should be as consumers become more sophisticated and discerning consumers of smartphones.

Insight 2: Dual cameras, cutting-edge processors and bigger batteries dominate the consumers’ feature wish list. This echoes the growing of the smartphone user base, who now has the opportunity and desire to do more with their phones – whether that’s perfecting their portrait photography, consuming video content or playing the latest game. Consumers are quickly understanding the importance of having the right feature set and having sufficient battery power to enjoy the phone’s capabilities for a full day or more before needed to recharge – hence the desire for larger batteries and fast charging.

Insight 3: Smartphone switching patterns are changing fast every year as the brand which promises better value for money features, stronger brand proposition, after sales support and head-turning designs tends to garner more share. For example: Xiaomi has a loyal user base and it is attracting users from other brands, notably Samsung. OnePlus is also attracting users to its high-value product propositions and subversive brand identity. While the loyalty is high for Xiaomi this year there is no guarantee that this will be sustained, especially for the price-conscious and brand-conscious Indian consumers.