Yet Another Chinese Smartphone Maker, UMI, Ventures into Indian Market

What’s the common thread that runs through the following name brands: Xiaomi, Coolpad, Huawei, Elephone, Vivo, Meizu, Oppo, ZTE, Lenovo, and Phicomm? They’re all Chinese companies who make smartphones and have entered the Indian market in recent months. Now, joining this league is yet another Chinese brand, UMI, which has announced a tie-up with Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart to sells its smartphone, the UMI Hammer. This makes UMI the 11^th company from the Chinese smartphone industry to make its presence felt in the Indian market.

The Indian smartphone space is a hotbed of activity currently, with not just brands from the neighboring country, but many others from the Asian and European region setting foot here. For its India debut, UMI has chosen a smartphone named Hammer.

As can be inferred from the name brand, Hammer is a smartphone meant for rugged use. It comes with features such as a body modeled from aluminum-alloy chassis as well as a fortifying Gorilla glass layer. All of these features are aimed at making the phone as durable for rough use as possible.

Hammer is packed with the latest features such as a 64-bit class quad-core system on chip (SoC), 16 gigabytes of storage capacity, a 2 gigabyte RAM, a 13 mega pixel camera (placed at the back), a front camera with 3.2 mega pixels, as well as a 2,500 mAh battery.

Interestingly, in the past two months alone, more than six different smartphone makers from China have launched their products in India. This indicates the growing interest that Chinese consumer electronics companies have in the Indian market. Another point worth mentioning is that all of these smartphones are priced very aggressively. In keeping with this trend, Hammer will be priced at INR 10,999 and is already available for sale on Flipkart.