With several countries, including those from Latin America and North America, having reached a saturation stage in terms of smartphone purchasing capacity, the focus of mobile handset makers will be on the emerging markets, like India, where there is a lot more room for expansion. The fact is, budget smartphones are in more demand in price-conscious markets, and Samsung appears to be conscious of this factor as it is reportedly coming out with the Galaxy J5 (2016).
The South Korean electronics giant hasn't revealed the release date of its Galaxy J5 (2016), but its launch is imminent as it has been cleared by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Chinese telecom equipment certification authority TENAA and the Bluetooth SIG certification. It should hit the stores in June if it follows its predecessor's (Galaxy J5 2015 version) footstep, however, there are possibilities of releasing it earlier than expected.
[Read: India, China to lead next leg of mobile market growth]
Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) sports a 5.2-inch display with 720×1,280 pixels, powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 processor, houses an Adreno 306 GPU and run on Android 5.1.1 Lollipop, according to GFXBench benchmark. It was also spotted with a 145.7×72.3×7.9 mm dimension, 155.4 g weight and other features like GSM, TD-SCDMA, TD-LTE, LTE FDD and WCDMA on TENAA. There are also reports that the device will come packed with a 16GB internal memory, 2GB RAM, a 12MP main camera, and a 5MP front-snapper.
The budget smartphone has been spotted on Zauba, a website that keeps track of imports and exports in India, with a price tag of Rs. 17,031, but its actual price is expected to be different. The 2015 version of Galaxy J5 was priced at Rs. 11,999 at the time of its launch, so, the upcoming device should not be very different in terms of pricing, despite the feature upgrades.
[Read: Global smartphone sales to increase 7 percent in 2016, forecasts GfK]
Interestingly, a survey by market research organisation GfK has found that the emerging Asia-Pacific region recorded a 20.5 percent growth in smartphones demand during the fourth quarter of 2015. It said that "India is a key driver with unit growth of 34 percent year-on-year, driven by its dominant low-end (sub-US$100) price band segment, which saw unit growth accelerate to 76 percent year-on-year." The report also forecast a 22.6 percent growth from the region in 2016.
It is obvious that budget smartphones are more in demand in emerging markets like India. So, handsets like the Galaxy J5 (2016) should find buyers in the country when it is launched.
