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On 9 September, many eyes widened with amazement when Apple CEO Tim Cook gave us the first official look at the iPhone Air. As its name indicates, what made this iPhone special was its astounding slim frame – the phone is a mere 5.64 mm slim at most points (the camera bump is a little thicker, though) and is not just the slimmest iPhone ever made but also one of the slimmest phones in the world. Of course, some corners had to be cut to make the device that slim, but it was still an astounding feat, and the tech world cannot seem to stop raving about it.
What many seem to have forgotten as they are swept away in the hype wave that Apple is a master at creating is that about ten years ago, there was a phone that was even thinner than the iPhone Air. So slim that it was considered to be the thinnest phone in the world. Its brand ambassador was none other than Hugh “Wolverine” Jackman. And it came from an Indian brand. We are talking about the Micromax Canvas Sliver 5, which was an insane 5.1 mm thin, and shook up the market way back in 2015.
In fact, super-slim phones first became a rage in the 2014-15 period. We had a deluge of phones that seemed to have not had a decent meal for months. In fact, the thinnest phone ever, the Vivo X5 Max, which was a crazy 4.75 mm thin (and remains the thinnest non-foldable phone to this day), was released in 2014, and there were also phones like the Oppo R5 which was just 4.85 mm around its phone-y waist, while the Gionee Elife S5.5 had its slimness (5.5 mm) written right into its name. Into this obsessed-with-slim market came the Micromax Canvas Sliver 5 in mid-2015.
Micromax was a leading Indian smartphone brand at the time, and enjoyed a formidable following not just in India, but also in some international markets, like Russia – it was the tenth largest phone manufacturer in the world in early 2015. In its home market of India, it was literally neck and neck with the mighty Samsung (/ ), and far ahead of the likes of Oppo, Vivo, Apple and newcomers like Xiaomi and OnePlus. The secret of its success was simple: its ability to offer well-specced devices with decent enough design at surprisingly affordable prices in a very price-sensitive market. In its co-founder, Rahul Sharma, the brand had a spokesperson who was skilled at communicating with consumers, dealers and the media. Its critics accused Micromax of rebranding Chinese phones, and geeks found its software inconsistent and buggy, but for a nation where getting a decent smartphone for under Rs 20,000 was rare, Micromax’s products, which were generally between Rs 5,000 – Rs 10,000, were stunning value for not too much money.
Having got a seemingly iron grip on the budget or entry-level smartphone segment, Micromax decided to start moving up the price ladder in 2014. This, of course, was easier said than done – the brand was seen as “cheap” and “pocket-friendly”, and while it sold more products than OnePlus and Oppo put together, it had a “low price, low quality” perception. To shake this off, Micromax made a number of strategic moves – it tied up with the geek-friendly Cyanogen (luring it away from OnePlus) for a special series of phones targeted at tech-savvy youth (called Yu), it hired a number of high-profile executives from other companies (they got Samsung India’s mobile and digital imaging head, Vineet Taneja), and it signed up high profile brand ambassadors (it stunned everyone when it got Hugh Jackman onboard in 2013). It also began to release products that were “expensive” by its general standards, targeting a slightly more upmarket audience. One of the first products in this “more premium” series was a phone that Micromax claimed would be “the thinnest phone ever.” It would be priced at Rs 17,999, and would be called the Micromax Canvas Sliver 5!
Micromax pulled out all stops to push the Canvas Sliver 5. Vineet Taneja launched it at a media event, where he went right ahead and called it the thinnest phone ever at 5.1 mm. To drive the point home, he compared it with many of its competitors. Micromax had built a transparent glass box which had a narrow (about 5.2-5.3 mm) slit at the top, claiming that only a truly slim phone would be able to pass through it completely, highlighting the fact that many of the so-called slim phones actually had camera bumps that made them thicker at the top (sounds familiar, yes?).
As the media watched, Taneja tried to drop a number of phones into the box – none were able to go through, until he tried the Canvas Sliver 5. Even the iPhone was not spared – Taneja placed the Canvas Sliver 5 on one side of a balance, placed an apple (!) that weighed about as much as the iPhone 5s on the other side, to show that the Sliver 5 was actually lighter. As if this were not enough, he even took a bit from the apple, and then placed it back on the balance. “The Sliver 5 is still lighter,” he said. For the record, the Canvas Sliver 5 was just 97 grams in weight, as compared to the 112 grams of the iPhone 5s – yes, it was a lighter world.
The phone did have its hardware compromises (familiar again, no?): it ran on the relatively low-end Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 chip, had only 16 GB of storage, and a smallish 2000 mAh battery. That said, it looked very smart, had an AMOLED display (still not very common in the segment), albeit not a full HD one, and a 3.5 mm audio jack, which some phones had jettisoned in the pursuit of thinness (read our hands on) . At Rs 17,999, it was one of the most expensive Micromax phones in the market, but its appeal was clearly to the lifestyle crowd rather than the basic budget one.
Micromax fanned the hype on the Canvas Sliver 5 with a very high-profile ad campaign featuring Hugh Jackman. The sleek print ads had Jackman holding the phone in ways that emphasised its slimness, and relied on subtle and minimal messaging rather than the loud spec callouts and comparisons that were the Micromax trademark. The icing on this ad cake was a well-crafted 90-second ad film that featured Jackman breaking out of a prison using the Canvas Sliver 5, showing how tough it was in spite of being utterly thin. It was a clever, sophisticated ad campaign and remains the best we have seen for any Indian phone. The message was clear: Micromax was gunning for a more premium slice of the Indian smartphone pie.
The official sales figures of the Micromax Canvas Sliver 5 were never disclosed but by all accounts, it not only did respectable numbers (“we are not looking for massive sales,” a senior Micromax executive confided to us, “we just want to let people know we are also capable of something like this.”) but also delivered a significant boost to the image of the brand. Unfortunately, the brand was not really able to cash in on this new positioning, as some of its subsequent premium products (most notably the Yutopia) did not do too well. Although it took a brief sabbatical from the market and returned with a new positioning statement, it struggled with demonetisation (which wiped out cash and cash on delivery purchases, both of which were important for Indian phone brands) and the surging popularity of 4G phones from Chinese competitors that outspecced Micromax’s phones at similar prices and often had better design.
Today, Micromax still exists but is no longer a major smartphone brand. The smartphone world has moved on, and Indian brands are no longer dominant in the smartphone market of their own country, although the likes of Lava remain very visible players. That said, as the world enthuses over the iPhone Air, the Micromax Canvas Sliver 5 reminds us that a decade ago, an Indian brand had it all – market share, Hugh Jackman as a brand ambassador, and the thinnest phone in the world. A phone that was even thinner than the iPhone Air.
