【bioware, eroticism and modernity】

Even as smartphone brands are bioware, eroticism and modernitycharting plans to aggressively expand their businesses in India, Acer is calling it quits — for now, at least.

The Taiwanese company is putting its insignificant mobile business aside to focus on its growing laptops and other hardware businesses in India, it said over the weekend. The move comes as India, the world's fastest growing smartphone market, continues to see new entrants arrive in the country.

Acer entered the Indian market in 1999 with its PC lineup and piloted the mobile business six years ago. Amid Chinese companies aggressively arriving and expanding in India in the recent years, Acer refuelled its attention on smartphones last year. But the company’s push was not enough for Acer’s smartphones to take off in the country, an executive said.

According to Acer India’s top executive, changes in several government policies such as Make in India took a toll on its strategies. "The change in government policies of Make in India and other aspects, our realisation has been that it is too much of a market which is left to the smaller brands rather than any larger brands trying to enter it at this particular stage," Harish Kohli, Managing Director, Acer India said.

“Today, mobiles have become a commodity from a price-point basis, rather than an experience basis. There are very few products based on experience. When you are into that kind of a space, it is a decision you need to take, whether to produce a quality product and bleed or just copy others and make a product for a particular price-point,” he added.

Acer India’s mobile business failure in India however had many other reasons, too, according to analysts. The company, which is among one of the top computer sellers in India (with as much as 10 percent of the market share), didn't scale the distribution of its smartphones in India, says Tarun Pathak, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Unlike Chinese brands such as OnePlus, Xiaomi, and even India’s Yu brand, Acer for most part didn’t pursue online flash sales and failed to leave an impression on the young audience, Pathak adds. Acer sold roughly 30,000 smartphone units in India this year. In comparison, Xiaomi sold three million smartphones in India between July and September alone.

Furthermore, Acer India didn’t have any smartphone in its offering that could have helped it gain instant foothold in the market, he adds. Over the years, Acer has launched a range of Android and Windows Phone smartphone models, but the company has remained hesitant in pushing marketing and logistics sides of the business.

Losing its hold on the Indian smartphone market will hurt Acer's global smartphone ambitions as well. "During Q3 2016, Acer had 0.04% of market share globally," according to Counterpoint Research. "The numbers have been declining sequentially since the start of 2016."