It’s high time for Vivo to bring online exclusive phones

Vivo recently announced that it would launch Vivo Apex 2019 on January 24. The company teased the phone with the water droplet. Vivo also released a blind test video on its Weibo page, which includes reaction from passerby after letting them feel the phone in their hands. The people who felt the phone on their hands describe it as a pebble, soap, and so on. This gave us an idea that the phone will have a sleek body and will incorporate a glass on its back.

We have no doubts that Vivo Apex 2019 will look stunningly great in terms of design and will also pack some noteworthy features inside. The company had released the concept phone last year as Vivo Apex with pop-up selfie camera in MWC 2018. And it had also been a pioneer on bringing the smartphone with an under-display fingerprint sensor in the past. So we really have high hopes from the smartphone maker in the flagship bracket even this time around.

Even on the midrange segment, Vivo brings come praiseworthy devices. Vivo V11 (Vivo V11i globally) and Vivo V11 Pro (Vivo V11 globally) were good devices. And owing to the rumors, Vivo V15 and Vivo V15 Pro will be equally compelling.

But the lesser known fact, Vivo also has its own lineup of budget smartphones. The Y-series smartphones from Vivo are typically budget-centric handsets. And the Vivo’s Y-series smartphones in a budget price segment doesn’t look so compelling. The price of the Y-series handsets is rather exorbitant and they do not seem to offer much value when compared to its competitors. The company recently launched the Vivo Y89, which do not have any outstanding features when compared to its competitors. Have a look at the quick specs overview below.

Vivo Y89 vs the competition

In the above comparison table, we can easily see that all the other smartphones pack a better punch when compared to the Vivo Y89. It should also be noticed that except the Vivo Y89 all the aforementioned smartphones are online exclusive in the market.

When a smartphone goes through the offline route, it goes through various distribution channels (national distributor, regional distributor, etc.). Different types of costs (banners, pamphlets, and leaflets for offline marketing, transportation costs, etc.) are involved. So, when the smartphone reaches the consumers’ end, the smartphone tends to get expensive. And that’s one of the reasons why the Vivo Y-series smartphones tend to be expensive. But that’s not all, Vivo has also been involved in sponsorship of different events. We saw Vivo being the main sponsor for the World Cup 2018, Indian Premier League (IPL) 2018 and so on.

After all these years of being in the smartphone market, Vivo has already garnered a tremendous amount of goodwill. And its pioneering innovations have also created an upsurge in its popularity. So it may not be an exaggeration if I say that Vivo doesn’t require so much of investment for the brand awareness in the present time. So what I think would be better for Vivo is that the brand should now focus aggressively on RnD (research and developments), which the brand seems to be doing it somewhat already. Other than that, Vivo should also focus on bringing bang for buck devices even in the budget price bracket. For the brand, which has already been renowned for their camera-centric approach and pioneering innovations, the online market can also be flourishing.

The online encroachment of Xiaomi, Huawei, and Oppo in the budget price segment with the sub-brand handsets like Redmi, Honor, and Realme is quite blooming. And the sales from the competitors is also hampering the sales of the Vivo phones. So it looks like it’s high time for Vivo to bring online exclusive phones packing a better punch than its present phones.