LeEco needs services exclusive enough to hook users: Counterpoint analyst

LeEco, the Chinese electronics firm, has unveiled a series of smartphones in India in the recent past – the latest being the Le 1s Eco. LeEco seems to be following a rather different path when compared with other Chinese counterparts like Oppo and Vivo with their aggressive marketing and cricket sponsorships, and Xiaomi that mostly focuses on social media marketing. With its disruptive device pricing, LeEco has made its stand very clear and company leaders are quite vocal on the plan of building a content ecosystem. LeEco leadership is clear that they don’t want to flood the market with devices, but rather ensure that every LeEco device has something for its users. LeEco India COO Atul Jain has always maintained that LeEco sells its phones at a cost lower than that of the Bill of Materials, thus indicating that software ecosystem is where the real piece of the pie they are gunning for. (Also read: LeEco pushing for smartphone dominance just like Micromax did some years ago) Along with the launch of its Le 1s Eco smartphone, the company also revealed its first steps into its content-driven plans. LeEco has tied up with Eros Now, Yupp TV and Hungama and announced what it calls its ‘Supertainment’ package – with the phone for Rs 10,899 which includes the Rs 9,999 phone and a one year membership fee of Rs 4,9000 and an additional LeEco offer of Rs 4000. “LeEco is the sole company that delivers a membership program which integrates terminals, clouds and applications in India,” says William Lee, Content VP of LeEco. In addition to providing the content, this membership program also integrates services like personal cloud storage services -LeDrive, LeMall and aftersales services. Speaking about the LeDrive at the launch event, Jain said that it offers 5TB of storage and is not a closed platform. “You can share links to your documents or photo albums stored on your LeDrive to non LeEco users as well. But buying LeDrive storage membership independent of the other features or independent of the LeEco phone is not an option as of now,” he said. The plan seems to be in place, but what about the content itself which is not original and comes at a slightly high price? “Consumers can continue to download individual apps, but getting it under one seamless platform as ours is what is unique. The convenience and ease of having your content organised is an advantage. Also, it is a smart platform, which will learn what you like as you use it,” justifies Jain. Analysts, however still think that the price is a little steep for aggregated, non-exclusive content. “The pricing will exceed even the average price of data consumption for most of the buyers per month. LeEco still needs to invest in creating their own suite of services around their portfolio, exclusive enough to hook the end users on the device ecosystem,” Tarun Pathak, Senior Analyst at Counterpoint Research tells Tech2. While the focus is the content ecosystem, the company is quietly making plans to launch retail stores in the country. Currently it follows the online-only route and has sold 4 lakh phones since entering the country this year. Flash sales accounted for 50-55 percent of the total sales. While Jain confirmed that within the next two months the phones should be available in multi-brand outlets, setting up retail stores can help push smart TVs too, which the company plans to launch in the country by June end.