Buying a 5G phone over an EMI in India is cheaper than getting a 4G phone, says Samsung India's Aditya Babbar

Samsung is having a busy month. The company recently launched two new 5G smartphones — the Galaxy A14 5G, which starts at Rs 16,499, and the Galaxy A23 5G, which starts at Rs 22,999 — in India. And now it is gearing to launch its next-gen Galaxy S-series smartphones on February 2. On the sidelines of these launches, we sat down for a conversation with Samsung India’s Director for Mobile Business, Aditya Babbar, to understand the company’s take on 5G smartphones and what the company is doing for making this technology more accessible. During our conversation, the Samsung executive told us that today, buying a 5G smartphone in India over an EMI has become cheaper than buying a 4G phone over an EMI.

“We, as a principal, have built affordability where our 5G phone on a monthly EMI is cheaper than a 4G phone. So, Galaxy A13 if somebody goes and buys today over an EMI costs Rs 1,466 per month and Galaxy A14 5G costs Rs 1,302 a month,” Babbar told us.

He also said that, today, Indians can buy a 5G phone in India at a cost of just Rs 44 a day. “Today, you can own a 5G phone at Rs 44 a day. That’s where we are going back to a principle of democratising 5G,” he added.

Sharing details about Samsung’s future plans as far as 5G devices are concerned, the Samsung India executive said that 5G was an important avenue for the company and that it expected almost 75 percent of its portfolio value to come from 5G devices.

“75% of our value this year will come from 5G. 5G happens to be an extremely important mission for us and the way that we have envisioned 5G is very very different. Like I said that it will be the widest distributed portfolio and it will be acquired through the platform of affordability,” Babbar told us.

“Today a consumer can upgrade to 5G at a lesser price than 4G…We will continue to make 5G more affordable to our consumers and accessible to consumers at every price point,” he added.

Talking about the success of the company’s Galaxy A-series smartphones in India, the Samsung executive said that the A-series devices was the largest selling series in India in the past year. “Today if I talk about A series, A series is the largest selling series of India in 2022…we have 62 million consumers using A series. So, this has been a testimony of the principle we build on A series,” the Samsung executive told us.