Recently, I stumbled upon fellow classmate Dominique Cai’s “Android One Low Cost Smartphone” blogpost in which she explains the new low-end smartphone introduced by Google.
Android One – 120 Dollars
Google phones, while still lacking behind Samsung’s and Apple’s in market share, is trying to “establishing its name in the developing world” as Dominique wrote.
While I agree this is a strong move from Google as Apple and Samsung have few successful models in the low end market, there are other competitors from overseas that can pose a great threat to Google’s new Android One.
Just this summer, while I was back in China, I bought a temporary smartphone online for 369 Rmb, which is roughly 60 dollars. It has similar operating systems, processing capacity as that of the Android One while being half its price.
TCL P306C – 60 Dollars
How is that possible?
One explanation is that many Chinese retail websites actually lose profit through selling phones. The website I directed to, www.jd.com, is a large online retailer in China known for selling certain phone models at well below store retail prices. In exchange, it has amassed a huge inventory turnover rate that has driven many other online appliance retailers out of the market.
Instead of conventional marketing, JingDong uses the resources that would have been devoted to advertisement to instead drive down costs of certain phone models to attract customers.