Over the last year, smartphone companies around the world have been pushing and shoving one another, caught up in a race to connect what they all refer to as “the next billion”.

The centerpiece of this marketing catch-phrase—which has been used and referenced by Google, Nokia/Microsoft and Mozilla to name a few— is India, where nearly 80 per cent of smartphone sales come from the sub-₹10,000 price category.

In the space of the last few months however, we’ve seen one contender dial back, another increase its focus, and efforts like Firefox OS hardly causing a ripple. Google, last month, announced its Android One programme, which will make it easier for Indian handset makers to churn out sub-$200 smartphones. If reports are to be believed, Google may end up subsidizing the phones in question, thus easing the burden on brands like Micromax.

Microsoft on the other hand has essentially decided to put Nokia’s entry-level, Series 40 and Asha mobile phones on the back-burner. Two weeks ago, CEO Satya Nadella also announced that several Nokia X products would be transitioned to its Windows Phone platform.

While shifting its focus away from the feature phone line may have been the best move for Microsoft—which really needs to concentrate on its core cash cows of Office, enterprise and cloud services—the decision to do so has certainly set back its mobile phone unit’s goal of connecting the next billion. Owners of Nokia X products cannot be faulted for feeling like second-class citizens right now; it is certainly not a pleasant feeling to buy a smartphone and find out the company plans on axing it a few months later.

Microsoft’s feature phone business, which includes the best-selling Asha series, was touted as a feeder system for its Lumia smartphones. Now, unless the company can rapidly start selling sub-₹7,000 Windows smartphones, which seems unlikely, its customers will end up with fewer choices.

And this is, perhaps, the biggest contradiction in the Indian smartphone market. Seven to eight years ago, Indian handset buyers were gripped by a Nokia-Samsung duopoly with just a hint of Motorola and Sony-Ericsson. Today, we have nearly 13 serious contenders offering high-quality products at bargain prices, but all of them either run Android or Android that comes with a bloated user interface.

Microsoft’s Windows Phone—which had an exciting, if small start in India— appears to be in retreat mode, with nearly half of its mobile phone units being given pink slips. BlackBerry is in a constant state of either resurgence or failure, with each passing day bringing no clarity on which will it be in the end.

What this leaves us, the next billion, with is two sets of companies. The first is the Indian set—Micromax, Karbonn, Lava, and Intex— which are being obliquely backed by Google.

The second is the Chinese and Taiwanese bunch, consisting of Xiaomi, Oppo, Gionee, Asus and HTC. The dark horses are the Lenovo-Motorola combine and Samsung/LG, which haven’t really made their ‘next billion’ strategies clear.

There are clear reasons why the online search giant would back Indian companies initially, with the most important factors being that these companies are no threat to Google. Companies such as Samsung, Oppo and Gionee have user interfaces slapped onto their products that eliminate many signs of the Android operating system.

While these two camps are both committed to seeing high-quality smartphones fall to lower price categories—the new ‘flagship’ is now ₹15,000 for instance— customers, however, no longer have genuine choice when it comes to software.

The homogenization of low-end smartphones is slowly beginning, with commoditization being the next inevitable step. While this is mostly good news for the customer, companies like Micromax need to be on guard. All they need to do is turn to HP and Dell to see how that turned out.

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