Over the last week, Micromax has been extensively campaigning on their official Facebook page, with a teaser stating that something special was going to happen on September 8. We all knew that Micromax is going to unveil the 4″ Ninja 4 smartphone on that day. But what we didn’t know was why Micromax was using the words “Why Y?” on those banners. Considering the fact that Micromax has been flooding the market with all kinds of budget smartphones, some even thought that they were going to launch new “Y” series of smartphones and tablets.
But that certainly wasn’t the case. Yesterday, Micromax featured a TV commercial on their Facebook page which surprisingly wasn’t about a new “Y” series of devices. Instead, the TV spot takes aim at Samsung and their highly popular Galaxy Y budget smartphone. If the potshots in the ad are any indication, Micromax definitely considers the Samsung Galaxy Y a threat to their utter dominance of the budget smartphone sector in India. You can take a look at the ad here:
As you can see, the Micromax ad seems to pick up from where a popular Samsung Galaxy Y advertisement left off. In a very similar fashion to the Samsung ad, in this one, you find a couple of guys, likely Micromax fans/users, making similarly sarcastic comments to the girl about her phone, as she had done in the Samsung ad with another older gentleman. Negative points about the Galaxy Y included the small 3″ screen, and the fact that it can be considered “expensive,” compared to similarly-specced Micromax devices. At the end Micromax shows off the Ninja 3.5 and Ninja 4.0 and asks “Why Y when you can use a bigger, faster, and better device?”
There is no doubt about the fact that the ad takes direct aim at the Samsung Galaxy Y. It’s obvious that Micromax has become used to being the king of the hill when it comes to the budget handheld device market in India, and are reluctant to relinquish or even share that position with anyone else. Granted, competitive advertising, with companies taking shots at each other, is nothing new, and many “accuse” Samsung of having started the trend when it comes to the mobile arena. It’ll be interesting to see whether Samsung is going to come up with a response to this “insult,” or just let it go, considering the budget smartphone industry in India isn’t Samsung’s primary target.
Another interesting point of note is that the ad also showed off another device with a 3.5″ screen called the, you guessed it, Ninja 3.5. This device will be priced at Rs 4,999 and features the same 1Ghz processor as the Ninja 4, and will also run Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
So, what’s your opinion on this “Why Y” ad by Micromax? Have you seen the advertisement? Do you think this type of aggressive marketing is what the company needs to cement its place at the top of the budget smartphone sector?
Posts
