Sometimes keeping up with the game means learning some tricks from rivals, a strategy that Samsung Electronics Co He did not want to adopt so easily in India, where Xiaomi Corp and other Chinese brands made big money.
The pages extracted from their game books include the savoir with the online marketing to millennials while Samsung tries to reinvent itself as a "younger brand", as well as providing sales staff for small shops and even finding a new love for the cricket with a sponsorship agreement.
Combined with a slew of new models, many aimed at undermine the Chinese domain of the telephone segment, from 150 euro to 300 euro (from 10.000 to 20.000) - the new tactics are bearing fruit, giving the South Korean technological giant the opportunity to claim the first place in the second quarter.
"Samsung was experiencing a kind of rejection of the threat that Xiaomi, Oppo, I live have placed, but now they have come out of the ostrich hole"Said Rushabh Doshi, director of research at the Canalys sector tracker. "Now they are fighting, surely. "
His Galaxy J6 was launched in May and the J8, presented since July, has worked particularly well, selling each model, 50.000 daysays Samsung. In an appeal to millennials, phones feature a new "video chat" feature that allows users to view videos seamlessly even while chatting text due to a transparent keyboard.
To be sure, Samsung has long dominated the premium smartphone market in India and features like "chat over video", designed in its Indian research and development center, emphasize its technological ability. He also built an extensive retail network in the country.
New ideas to dominate the market!
But Samsung, which experienced a slowdown in profit growth in April-June, knows it must close the stages in India if it wants to avoid the hard lessons in China.
And India is a too big a prize to lose: the global smartphone market n. 2 with about 400 millions of users and an estimated value in 20 billions of dollars (about 1,34 millions of rupees every year).
It is also the leading mobile phone market with the fastest growth in the world, expanding by around 20% last quarter a year earlier. For Samsung, India is its largest market outside the United States and one in which it has invested heavily, opening the world's largest smartphone factory outside New Delhi last month.
But the Chinese brands now represent each one on two phones sold in India with Xiaomi doing the best steps. After joining the 2014 market, the brand "Mi"He steadily gained share to beat Samsung from first place last December.
Although Samsung has regained the title in the last quarter, according to the Counterpoint survey, the market share of 29% has only reached 28%. Samsung started selling three new phones in the quarter while Xiaomi had a version of the product.
To promote your smartphone Galaxy On6 from 200 euro (about 14.400) launched last month, Samsung has avoided the traditional television advertising. Instead he embarked on one of his most aggressive online campaigns, enlisting the Bollywood heartbreaker Tiger Shroff and uploading videos and photos to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
"It's not just an announcement you'll see again and again, because the millennials will get bored, what we want to do is involve them ... and whatever platform they are, we'll be there ", Ranjivjit Singh, Samsung The Indian marketing director said in an interview.
But some analysts warn that Samsung will have to develop creative strategies on social media if it wants to maintain its advantage over Chinese rivals and establish a stronger one.
