Micromax Joy F145 mobile phone made by Indian company, Micromax Informatics Limited, in 2016. The mobile has a 61mm display screen, 1.3 MP camera, 8GB of storage and 2G network coverage.

Micromax is one of the largest smartphone producers in India, and indeed the world. The company is an example of how mobile phone manufacturers have revolutionised the market for affordable mobile phones using innovative technology. The company has given millions of people in India access to communications technology that would otherwise be beyond reach. This phone represents an example of this change in access to the mobile phone market in India.

India is the second-largest telecommunications market and the second-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Big companies like Samsung, Xiaomi (world’s 5th largest smartphone company), Lenovo/Motorola, LG, Sony and Apple still dominate the mobile scene in India. Some domestic and Chinese companies, however, have been making inroads with users over the last few years, eroding some of the users from the larger, global companies by offering multi-function handsets at a fraction of the cost. The mobile phone market in India had its strongest ever quarter this year.

Micromax Informatics Limited is an Indian consumer electronics company that manufactures and supplies mobile handsets worldwide. The company offers dual-SIM phones, smartphones, tablets, televisions, and laptops. It sells its products through mobile stores and retail outlets in India. The company was founded in 1991 by Rajesh Agarwal and is based in Gurgaon, India. It is one of the largest domestic mobile handset companies in India. It also has offices in Hong Kong and Dubai.

Micromax, as well as other Indian telecommunications companies, focused on specific gaps in the Indian market, targeting more remote areas of India that the larger telecoms companies were not focussing on. The company story goes that co-founder Rahul Sharma passed through a village in Bengal with no electricity. The Public Call Office (PCO) got signals from a huge antenna mounted on a nearby building and powered by a truck battery. A man drove the truck battery to a neighbouring village to charge it every night and brought it back to the village each morning. This incident supposedly led Sharma to realise the importance of battery power in more remote areas of India. Micromax’s first mobile phone had a much longer battery life than other mobile phones on the market. All 10,000 handsets were sold in 10 days with nothing more than word of mouth marketing. Conversations and examples such as this drove the development of specific types of technologies into Micromax handsets, taking advantage of these gaps in the market.

A dual SIM slot also became a feature of Micromax handsets, giving users flexibility of plans. For example, one phone could have one plan for internet and another for calls as that could often end up being cheaper than bundling it all into one contract. Employers will sometimes supply workers with a SIM card rather than a work phone, so this allows employees to keep their personal and work numbers separate (and turned off when not at work). This mobile phone has a dual SIM slot.