The August 16th – August 29th Bloomberg Businessweek included a technology piece titled “Giving Indians the Phones They Want” (posted online as India’s Mobile Phone Hitmaker).
This article profiled a local Indian cell phone maker named Micromax, which is currently experiencing great success with their very localized cell phone models. The article reports that Micromax is selling about 1 million handsets each month – about 4% of the 6.3 billion dollar Indian market. India’s largest mobile phone provider, Nokia, has seen their market share go from 64% in 2008 to 52% at the end of 2009, thanks in part to hyper-localized companies such as Micromax stealing some of their business.
So how did Micromax do it?
User research.
Now, if you were to ask Micromax, they may not refer to it in such “user experience-y” terms. They may call it “understanding their market,” or “targeting a demographic,” or even “localization,” but make no mistake: the secret to their success here is most definitely due to user research.
They looked at how Indians were living their lives (the users and their context), identified the frustrations they had with existing mobile technology (the problems), and formulated a product that would alleviate these frustrations (the solutions).
Some examples:
Micromax’s recent success stands as a great example of how investing the time to understand your users’ needs and desires allows you to effectively stack the deck in your favor, thereby increasing the chance that the next hand you are dealt will be a winning one.