India’s entry-level smartphone market isn’t getting cheaper, t’s getting smaller. As memory costs push established brands upward, 2GB and 3GB phones are returning at higher prices, while new and lesser-known brands rush online to fill the vacuum. But there’s another competitor emerging: refurbished phones. The real battle may be between today’s lesser new phone and yesterday’s better one.

2018 has been a pretty eventful year for the smartphone industry. Let me recapitulate some of the interesting ones, and hope 2019 brings...

November ends. The woes of the mobile industry do not. Murphy’s law says: “If things can go wrong, they will go wrong!” and this is...