If you’ve been planning to buy a new smartphone soon, be prepared to pay a bit more than the what the price tag is showing up. According to multiple reports, the prices of various smartphones may go up by up to 8-percent soon. The reason for the same is being cited as the continuously falling value of the Indian rupee against the United States dollar.
Recently, two Chinese manufacturers – Xiaomi and Realme (former subsidiary of Oppo) – hiked the prices of some of their smartphones because of the same reason. While Xiaomi bumped up the prices of its Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A smartphones, Realme increased the prices of its Realme 2 and Realme C1 smartphones.
“At Realme, we tried to control the price, providing our devices in best price possible. But forced to increase the price marginally on some of the products which are affected the most due to the current market scenario. Even after elevating the price, all the products remain the best in their price segments,” Madhav Sheth, Chief Executive Officer of Realme was quoted as saying in a TimesNow report.
According to a report by ET Telecom, industry analysts have predicted that due to rupee’s value having gone down by approximately 15-percent this year, prices of smartphones will go up by 5 to 8-percent. This includes devices from all major manufacturers like Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo.
Watch: How Realme Phones Are Made
“Xiaomi and Realme have hiked prices, and it is likely that everyone will do the same. 60 to 70-percent of the demand was fulfilled during the Diwali festive period. A lot of customer spending has already taken place,” said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, as quoted by the ET Telecom report.
