E-commerce major Flipkart has entered into a strategic partnership with Asus, the Taiwanese electronics major, in a bid to capture a 40 per cent share of the domestic handset market by 2020.
Flipkart will be a premium seller for Asus smartphones and will launch the ZenFone Max Pro M1 on 23 April, to be sold exclusively on its e-commerce platform. A mid-range smartphone, the ZenFone Max Pro M1 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor.
“Flipkart has driven the adoption of smartphones in India, and grown the market through innovations and a deep sense of knowing what consumers want,” remarked Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart. “With this partnership with Asus, we’re multiplying those efforts by collaborating to leverage our individual strengths — data-driven research and insights, and technological prowess — to build smartphones truly customised for India.”
Jerry Shen, Asus CEO, saw tremendous opportunity in creating products and services that address India’s special market needs. “With Flipkart’s partnership, we aim to gain more insights about Indian consumers’ needs, which can help us develop even more suitable products for the Indian market,” he added.
According to a Flipkart spokesman, out of every 100 smartphones sold in India, about a quarter was sold by the company. Flipkart aims to increase this to 40 per cent of the overall Indian smartphone market by 2020.
The partnership with Asus is part of the strategy of achieving the 40 per cent market share.