The Rise of Fire-Boltt: How an Indian Company Beat Samsung in the Smart Watch Market

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The smart watch market: who lost to Samsung

Last week at Spillikins, the chef had a good look at the smart watch market. Well, or, more precisely, he explained how Samsung will punish everyone, including Apple. To quote the key point: “Samsung globally decided to stop fighting for margin, threw all its forces into maintaining market share.” Read here.

Here, of course, I want to intervene with the fact that by lowering the price you can fight the Chinese, but it is unlikely that an iPhone user, having seen a discount on Samsung Watch, will refuse to buy an Apple Watch. Most likely, he will not even know about discounts on Samsung, because they are outside his picture of the world.

Allow me to take two steps aside, but I can not help but share the story. I have several friends who use Apple technology. They do not buy on credit, salaries are 200+ tr, they are not interested in electronics. And I can even call one a retrograde, because in principle he buys an iPhone SE for himself (as it comes out, he immediately goes and buys it). And the other day we met, and for the first time he drew attention to my Galaxy S23 Ultra. He looked and said: “What they don’t come up with, why heaps of these lenses, if here is my iPhone SE 2022 with one camera, but it shoots better.” I will not bore you, but I failed to convince him that the Galaxy S23 Ultra shoots better. A man looks at the screens of smartphones and says that he has a better photo. At the same time, he still looks like this … with a squint, condescendingly, they say, here you are a fool, you don’t notice the obvious. In his picture of the world, only older iPhone models are better.

If my friend was a single instance, then I could still write it off on the “Apple of the brain.” However, in varying degrees, but this is a typical feature of an Apple user who is not interested in technology.

But back to smartwatches. Here is a screenshot of the market situation. Nothing here surprises you? I would say that Samsung is not preparing to punish everyone here, but Samsung was punished, and directly specifically.

As if out of nowhere, a new company Fire-Boltt (orange sector) appeared, which pushed Samsung into second place in the market. About the punishment of Samsung here, of course, is conditional, because Samsung and the new Fire-Boltt work in different price segments.

Fire-Boltt is an Indian company that has tripled shipments in the past year. This year, CEO Arnav Kishore predicts another 2x growth in 2023. And I would say that this is bragging if there had not been a similar interview last summer, in which Mr. Kishore spoke about a 3-fold growth in 2022.

In theory, a 2x growth in 2023 is possible, since in 2022 the company worked exclusively in the home Indian market. And only starting from the end of the year it began to engage in international expansion, entering or preparing to enter the markets of Singapore and Vietnam. Fire-Boltt sees these two markets as gateways to Southeast Asia.

The question, of course, is whether it will be possible to repeat the success in the home market. In India, Fire-Boltt has grown rapidly through a combination of price, design and features, launching inviting loyalty programs and active collaborations with local stars. Pictured below is Kiara Advani, a popular actress who starred in Hindi and Telugu films.

The site has a whole page that lists everyone with whom the company cooperates. For convenience, they even made a breakdown: athletes, stars, influencers.

Let’s take a look at the watch models that beat Samsung!

Now they are actively promoting the Fire-Boltt Legacy model.

1.43-inch AMOLED screen with 600 nits (not bad!), Always-On display (wow!), two metal buttons for real watch control (good!), built-in speaker for Bluetooth calls (unthinkable!) , all the necessary sensors for measuring heart rate, oxygen in the blood, and even IP68 protection (great!) and…. the price is 3,999 rupees, or 3,921 rubles! Delight, ecstasy, just pulls to start dancing with elephants! Jokes aside, it looks good and functionally great, and the price is fire!

Let’s see another model! Quantum! This is a smart watch with classic watch wallpapers. Screen 1.25 inches (apparently IPS, not AMOLED), 128 MB and Bluetooth to download your favorite tracks, heart rate, oxygen sensor, ceramic bezel, battery for 2 days, metal case. The price is 2940 rubles. And again dances, elephants and songs.

All models are typical in function. Perhaps the two main differences are AMOLED or IPS and case design.

I want to share another model. Functions are the same as other watches. Remarkable design. Like other Fire-Bolt watches, this one masquerades as a mechanical watch.

The photos are posted such that you would not think that this is a smart watch with a screen.

We all looked at smartwatches and wondered why most manufacturers make them deliberately scary, why not take a classic case? Fire-Boltt seems to be thinking the same thing. And they made a bet that played. The company has invested in the design of the case and the creation of wallpapers that copy (or, more correctly, “inspired by”) the watch faces of famous brands.

Here, of course, affordable prices also played a role. On the brand’s website, I did not find watches that would have crossed the line of 5 thousand rubles / rupees.

To be honest, I have no doubt that in 2023 the company will actively grow. On the website, Fire-Boltt emphasizes that they make a very high quality product. Live watch looks, in my opinion, not bad.

Finally, I would like to add two things.

Firstly, I can’t help but say that it’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a tight and laggy site as Fire-Boltt’s. It slows down and freezes everything that you can think of. What company would have made such a site in our country, everyone would have ridiculed it. Looking at India, I once again think: it’s a pity that in the 90s no one invited Western companies to assemble electronics cheaply in our country.

And what? We are not so different from India. At the start, we are even cooler. In India, 50% of the population does not have a toilet in the house; in our country, according to Rosstat, only a quarter of the population uses cesspools. And our websites are much faster. And in terms of average wages, they have already lost to China and almost went down to India. So not much and would be a big overpayment. At the same time, I am convinced that our human capital is of better quality than in India, at least due to better school education. A few years ago, there were leaks in the press that Apple cannot teach Indians how to assemble the simplest iPhones: they cannot screw in the screws according to the instructions. We would definitely screw everything in the right place.

Secondly, a few years ago it was said that India would not become the second China in terms of economic growth. Maybe it is. But the market potential is still huge. The local company, initially selling goods exclusively in the home market, was able to take second place in the world, beating giants such as Samsung and Xiaomi.

Wi-Fi 7 goes to the masses at Computex 2023

At Computex, several companies showed their Wi-Fi 7 solutions both as modems in laptops and as routers.

The popularity of the Taiwan Technology Expo is far behind. One of the reasons is that people are more interested in smartphones than computers. And it was in the noughties that everyone read with excitement about new motherboards and modifications to video cards.

By the way, be surprised, but the representatives of generation Z (born from 1997 to 2012) and the “alpha” following it (since 2012), the so-called digital natives, are worse at computers than you and I. Most of them started getting acquainted with technology from smartphones, and already closer to the stage when smartphones even had non-removable batteries. So for them, technology is magic boxes with touch screens.

Why is it interesting?

Already said this idea, but still impressive. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E were introduced and standardized in 2019 and 2020. In fact, recently. For comparison, Wi-Fi 4 was launched in 2008, Wi-Fi 5 has appeared since 2014. Wi-Fi 6 has appeared since 2019/20. Well, you understand that after the publication of the standard, at least another year passes, or even one and a half before active implementation.

And according to the logic, Wi-Fi 7 should have been introduced somewhere in 2024/25, and in 2026 the first devices would start to come out.

And as a result, the first smartphones and routers that support Wi-Fi 7, which, by the way, has not even been standardized yet, appeared already at the end of 2022.

And it is unlikely that buyers have a request for Wi-Fi 7. Here, of course, my subjective experience, but, according to the sensations, only a few people use Wi-Fi 6.

At the same time, by the way, Wi-Fi 6 itself has not yet been fully debugged. It often happens that the equipment that should support Wi-Fi 6 simply does not see the network. I distribute Wi-Fi 6 from smartphones (different brands and different chipsets), and often test smartphones and laptops do not see the network.

It seems that all manufacturers were gathered behind closed doors and said that in a year virtual reality will be launched all over the world and there is an urgent need to provide high-speed Internet in the premises.

What have they shown?

For ordinary people, the most interesting thing was the unremarkable (against the background of the monstrous ASUS router) Realtek booth, whose modems are often found in our laptops and desktop PCs (because it is inexpensive and works fine). The maximum speed of this Wi-FI 7 module connected to the M.2 connector is 2800 Mbps, 5 GHz and 6 GHz are supported (160 MHz channel for Wi-FI 6 and 320 MHz channel for Wi-Fi 7).

The kit comes with a Bluetooth 5.4 module. [Примечание для общего развития. Для нас с вами, как я понимаю, Bluetooth 5.4 вообще не интересен, так как новый стандарт делает упор на построение звездообразных сетей, в первую очередь нацеленных на коммерческое использование. В качестве примера можно привести электронные ценники в магазинах, которые станут более энергоэффективными и защищенными, благодаря тому, что информация будет передаваться с шифрованием, и точными. Этот момент мне незнаком, но оказывается, что если в магазине множество Bluetooth-ценников, они начинают сбоить из-за помех].

The star of the event, of course, was the huge ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BE98 router.

ASUS says it’s the world’s first quad-band Wi-Fi router that can theoretically deliver speeds up to 25,000 Mbps. In addition to wireless technologies, there are also 10 gigabit Ethernet ports. The router can be combined into a Mesh network.

And the router even has such an incomprehensible function to me as a three-level acceleration of games. The function promises to overclock traffic at all levels – from the user’s gaming device to the game server. The only thing that became clear is the positioning of the router. It seems to be designed for large gaming clubs. Like a game server is connected to a router by wire, and then the router, thanks to Wi-Fi 7 speeds, distributes everything to gaming computers.