According to a report by the Mobile Marketing Association, feature phones constituted around 55 percent of the total handset shipments in India in 2016. Also, 75 percent of the feature phone users were from the upper middle class section of the society.
The report concludes by saying that almost 85 percent Indian feature phone users do not intend to switch to smartphones on their next purchase despite the appealing features and low price tags.
The report has come as a huge surprise to analysts because sale of smartphones from local and Chinese brands have been impressive over the past year in India. The study sheds light on feature phones being still more popular than smartphones in India, which were believed to be racing towards extinction.
Preeti Desai, country manager, MMA, adding her cents to the discussion said that that 75 percent of feature phone users were from upper SECs (socio-economic classification) and middle-class section of the society, unlike popular belief that these phones are used only by rural sections of the population.
Feature phones certainly have several pros when compared to smartphones though, including long battery life, low cost, ease-of-use, and minimal repair costs, which are largely missing from entry-level smartphones as they simply offer benefits like internet access, but miss out on key areas of battery and repair costs.
Mobile brands like Lava and Intex are deeply rooted in the feature phone business. Intex sold more than 19 million feature phones in the last two years and boasts of a wide range of over sixty feature phone models to choose from.
Feature phones also offer internet access to users anyway and the launch of 4G VoLTE-ready feature phones will certainly sustain the growth of feature phones this year as well, said Shobhit Srivastava, a research associate with Counterpoint Research.