Dubai: The Dubai-headquartered smartphone manufacturer Xtouch is aiming to double its sales to one million units this year with a new strategy.
Tim Chen, founder and managing director of Xtouch, told Gulf News that they sold 500,000 smartphones in the Middle East last year and aims to double it to one million units this year and another one million in Europe and Africa.
The company is five years old and has sold three million units so far, becoming one of the top five mobile brand in the Middle East market in 2017.
“In the last two years, our sales have been slow and we were looking at the competition. This year we are looking at ourselves and focus more on customer-centric products. We are listening to our customers and will bring products that touch customer value and that is why we have launched our own e-commerce portal,” he said.
He said that e-commerce is one of the fastest growing business verticals but the company’s aim is to target people who do not have the credit cards. About 40 per cent of the people use credit cards in the UAE to buy from e-commerce.
“We are targeting the 60 per cent of the low-income people, our target audience, and they can buy a device with a 50 per cent down payment and the rest in three month interest-free equated monthly instalments. All we need is the Emirates ID copy and the passport copy. We are offering 10 per cent discount on our website for students and people with less than Dh5,000 salary,” he said.
High demand
He said that competition among smaller mobile companies is to offer bigger batteries, higher camera resolutions and bigger screens but the wireless charging and wireless headset is available only on high-end phones such as Samsung Galaxy and Note and Apple’s iPhone X.
“We are bringing the high-demand technologies such as wireless charging and a wireless headset to the low- to mid-tier models where the mass customers can afford. We launched the Xtouch X smartphone with wireless earphones and a power bank wireless charger in the UAE for Dh819. If the customers don’t want the wireless power bank, then it is Dh699. That is the differentiation we bring to the expat community,” he said.
The 5.8-inch bezel-less screen with 18:9 aspect ratio is powered by MediaTek 1.5GHz quad-core chip set with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of ROM. The microSD card supports up to 128GB. It houses 13MP rear and 8MP front-facing cameras.
