The early 2000s saw an onslaught of locally manufactured mobile phone brands that shook the market by offering impressive specs at attractive price points, dominating the entry-level and mid-range devices stack that targeted the young and restless, who bought them in hoards as a symbol of coolness and panache. Before this of course, phase one of the mobile phone revolution of India – the early days – was dominated by a handful of brands like Panasonic, Ericsson, Nokia and Siemens. The 2000s were when the mighty four from India flooded the market one after another – Micromax, Lava, Karbonn and Intex.

While all of them targeted consumers who were willing to shell out anything between Rs.8000 to Rs. 18,000 for a colourful, eye-catching device with big battery life, decent camera specs and most importantly, a solid service network, each of them carved out a unique niche – where one was very different from the other. Micromax the youth favourite. Driven also by its sub-brand Yu, the Micromax marketing team went to college fests, reality TV shows and music festivals, guaranteeing a captive audience and sales conversions. Lava and Karbonn ended up becoming value-conscious blue-collar customers’ brands of choice. Rugged devices that could withstand humidity, dust, a bit of rain, and came with impressive buy-back and resale potential. Intex played a slightly unconventional game where it coupled its devices with its home appliances range, attempting to create its own gadget ecosystem in middle-class Indian homes. One of its last launches was one of India’s first indigenously developed smart watch – that was unveiled at the Shanghai leg of Mobile World Congress – a clear signal that it was ready to pip its Chinese brethren. But that was not to be.

The hype around Indian-origin smartphones came to a shuddering end in 2015. A strategic and clever takeover of the mobile devices market by China brought Indian brands to their knees. While the global impact of Chinese phones flooding the world were felt by every country, India had the most to lose – again, thanks to a value-conscious customer base. Chinese brands caught this nerve rather early, and the plethora of brands – Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo – made every device specially-curated for India. A lot of their global and sub-continent models were modified to suit the Indian market. It was only a matter of time before a part of the manufacturing moved to India, making these brands household names – something that came with trust and efficiency.

The final nail on the coffin for Indian-origin brands was the massive marketing horsepower of brands like Vivo and Oppo. During the glory days of Chinese devices in India, Oppo was the principal sponsor of the Indian cricket team while Vivo was the title sponsor of the Indian Premier League (IPL). Xiaomi, however played a different game where it went to town with a message that it doesn’t spend money on advertising, and passes on the additional savings to the customer. Between Xiaomi and Mi, this strategy worked wonders for years to follow.

2026 – the entry and mid-range device market is largely dominated by the same names while the premium segment is owned by Samsung and Apply. However, recent developments in software and AI have fuelled a resurgence of Indianness in mobile phones – this time under the hood.

Recently, HMD (Nokia in its new avatar) launched a device called Vibe 2 5G, and positioned it as a phone with an Indian heart. What this essentially means is that the software – mainly the AI component – is made in India. The device comes integrated with Sarvam AI – a homegrown Indian AI unicorn that features a native chatbot pre-installed. Pretty much like any popular AI tool, you can use Sarvam AI to ask questions. The second aspect of Indianness under the hood is multi-Indian language support. The Vibe 2 5G is India’s first smartphone with Indus by Sarvam AI– it supports 22 Indian languages in its attempt to democratize smartphone usage across segments and dialects. To complete a three-prong approach to localizing the device, HMD has incorporated Sanchar Saathi – Department of Telecommunications’ initiative to address a popular pain point among Indian mobile phone users – security. Priced at around Rs. 15,000, this device was sold out within days, nudging HMD to ramp up manufacturing.

The success of this device is a subtle signal that a new era of phones with an Indian flavour is slowly frothing up, and we can look forward to more such devices and lineups in the weeks to follow. Desi phones are coming; look out and watch out!