Acer India has suspended its smartphone business due to high competition and ‘price sensitivity’, the company’s India Managing Director Harish Kohli told Business Standard. Acer re-entered the smartphone market in India last year with two new models. According to the report, Kohli said that “the change in policies of Make in India and other such initiatives left to the smaller brands rather than any larger brand” although its not clear what Kohli was implying. MediaNama contacted Acer India’s Head of Marketing Communications Sumanth Sudarshan for a confirmation and clarity, but he was unavailable for a comment. Kohli added that the mobile phone business was initially stared off in pilot mode and sold phones only through ecommerece portal like Amazon and Flipkart. (List of Acer phones in India here). The company also previously invested $10 million in setting up a manufacturing plant for assembling smartphone locally in India last year. Kohli said that the Indian mobile phone market was more into manufacturing and selling phones at a cheaper price, rather than focusing on quality. “When you are into that kind of a space, it is a decision you need to take, whether to produce a quality product and bleed or just copy others and make a product for a particular price-point,” Kohli told Business Standard. Financials and other business segments Acer’s smartphone business is dwindling and contributes to very small part of its overall business. Revenue from the company’s smartphone business accounted for just 1% of its overall revenue in Q3 2016. This…
