India has witnessed a flurry of budget smartphone launches in the last three months. Companies including Samsung, Xiaomi and Realme seem to be more attentive towards this category in India
Pic credits – Oppo IndiaBBK owned smartphone brand Oppo has launched A5 smartphone with 64 GB storage at an asking price of Rs 12,990 in India. It is to be noted here that Samsung had recently added A20 smartphone in India at almost similar prices.
First launched in a 32 GB variant, Oppo has slashed the prices of this smartphone almost twice in last six months. The phone that debuted for an asking price of Rs 14,990 in now retailing for a price of Rs 11,990 on the online sales channel.
Increasing competition in the budget smartphone category
India has witnessed a flurry of budget smartphone launches in the last three months. The likes of Samsung M10, Samsung M20, Redmi Note 7, Redmi Note 7 Pro and Realme 3 are competing in the budget smartphone category to help make their companies grab the number spot.
This flurry of smartphone launches started after a report by IDC said that Xiaomi had lead the Indian smartphone market for six consecutive quarters. Smartphone companies, since then have been trying to woo consumers with devices with latest specification and prices set in the affordable category.
Though Xiaomi was successfully able to capture the biggest smartphone market share in India, Samsung, was also able to maintain its tag of number one smartphone brand of the world. One of IDC’s reports read, “Samsung once again remained the leader in the worldwide smartphone market despite a 13.4% decline in shipments from last year. The flagship S9/S9+ and Galaxy J series helped drive the shipments during the quarter. However, the company continued to take hits from growing competition, particularly Chinese players.”
Oppo, as per the same IDC report, continued to face a slowdown in key markets like India and most of Southeast Asia as it eased back on its aggressive marketing and sales activities in the region. Overall, the company witnessed decline of 1.9 per cent over last year. Its low-end models remained popular throughout the quarter.
Oppo A5 features
Oppo A5 smartphone comes equipped with a 6.2-inch HD+ display that offers screen resolution of 1520 x 720 pixels in 19:9 aspect ratio. The phone comes powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 octa-core processor mated with Adreno 506 GPU and 3GB RAM.
It sports a dual rear cameras setup which features a combination of 13-megapixel, f/2.2 aperture sensor with a 2-megapixel, f/2.4 aperture. Oppo has equipped the smartphone with an 8-megapixel, f/2.2 aperture camera sensor. It is powered by a 4230 mAh battery that the company claims offers up to 14 hours video playback and 11 hours gaming time. Oppo A5 runs Android 8.1 with company’s ColorOS 5.1 out of the box.
