EXCLUSIVE: Asus India’s Head of Smartphone Division on the ROG Phone 5s and Big Plans for Esports Development in the Country

As ASUS gears up to enable mobile gaming enthusiasts with the latest ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro, we had a chance to have a conversation with Dinesh Sharma, Business Head, Commercial PC and Smartphone, System Business Group, ASUS India. He shared his valuable insights about the new smartphone, some of its best features, and how ASUS plans to take the mobile gaming sector in India to the next level with its involvement. Read the conversation, below:

Hello, Mr. Dinesh and congratulations on the launch of you latest smartphone. I wanted to start by asking a question that has come up too many times in the past two years. How is the global chip shortage affecting the launch of this phone or the stocking of this device?

As far as ROG Phone Series in India is concerned, we’ve done very well to manage the supply chain. So, if you see, ROG Phone 5 was well available across the year. Some models, some variants might go out of stock. But overall, the product availability was consistent since the time of launch till now, and now we are phasing out ROG Phone 5, and we are also introducing ROG Phone 5s. So, again, the customer gets upgraded specs, we have not raised the price, the price remains the same, and the customer gets continuous availability, and if you go and see all the variants that we have launched, of both the 5s as well as the 5s Pro are all available right now for purchase starting from 18^th at noon.

Personally, I believe that ASUS is the leader of the premium mobile gaming market as of right now. But with other smartphone manufacturers looking to capitalize with their own products following the gaming and Esports explosion in India, what do you think will be the biggest challenge for the brand to remain at the top?

You know, the technologies that we bring to the fore for our proprietary phones are a combination of multiple technologies that we’re using across the company in multiple categories. So we use the best of performance capabilities that we can build the best of thermals that we can build the best of audio that we can do the best of you know, like motion control sensors, you know, like other control aspects, like a proprietary a trigger system, etc, you know, that people to get to the, to get to customer or superlative experience on our flagship smartphone, okay, that is unparalleled. So, I think two things one is very strong focus on our end customers, their needs and their feedback on our products. Second is our capabilities on r&d and technology, these two things need to combine, you know, to always help us deliver better and obviously, you know, like, we give other aspects which are quite hygienic, like, great service, you know, to, to our customers and, and other aspects, you know, like, availability, etc, we’re ensuring that we become very good at it.

Since the beginning, the gaming smartphone sector is a very niche market. So, what do you think has changed for ROG from the first phone to the fifth model right now?

I think gaming is relatively, yes, a niche market. It’s growing quite fast and acceptance of ROG phone, not only as a gaming phone, but then overall, great flagship. So, when when the consumer buys an ROG phone, it’s not like they miss out on other aspects of a flagship. Even the camera quality and performance of our ROG phone is one of the best in the segment. So therefore, if somebody has a higher affinity towards gaming or loves to game, and they’re in the market for a flagship, it makes a lot of sense for that particular consumer to also buy ROG phones, and with the good word of mouth that existing ROG users are spreading are help it gain traction day by day. Additionally, right from the first to the fifth generation, we’ve been very consistent in our approach and what we offer as a value proposition.

As we have seen in the gaming laptops sector, which is far wider than the gaming smartphone market, there’s a wide range in terms of pricing and performance also that you get for that price. So, since there is a huge boom in India in the smartphone sector, do you think the gaming smartphone sector will see a similar boom, and maybe coexist in that category alongside laptops?

Definitely growth of the gaming smartphone sector will be good, because if we look at some of the stats on smartphone gaming as a whole, right, one, if you look at the expected penetration of gaming, it’s already crossed about 200 plus million subscribers in India, and even if we look at some of the bigger games like, for example A+ games like BGMI or Call of Duty, etc. put together, the installed base of these kinds of games in India itself is more than 75 million in our estimate, with more than 35 million active users. So, if you ask any of these players, for them the most aspirational and the best smartphone to play their favourite game would be the ROG phone. So, a lot more consumers would desire to have this kind of capability, this kind of ultimate weapon in their hand and this market is expected to grow. I mean, if you look at all the analyst growth projections for gaming in India, from a revenue of approximately $1 billion in 2021, it is expected to have $5 billion revenue in India by 2025 with a CAGR of 35-40%. So, with this kind of growth expected in the country and all the catalysts like better smartphone capability, more games coming in and 5G will improve the bandwidth in the country which has some of the lowest data rates. All these factors are very much conducive and the pandemic has accelerated socializing through gaming and mobile gaming has become one of the key group activities for people and that is a big difference in terms of growth. Therefore, if you have the best product, which serves that need, it’s bound to gain more and more traction as we move forward.

I wanted to actually speak about the phone itself. This is by far the best specifications I’ve seen on a gaming smartphone, like the processor, cooling, memory, storage, everything is top notch. But I was a little curious about the GameFX audio system and how it will enhance the sound quality for ROG gamers?

Okay, that’s a very good question. So, the Game FX audio system has a couple of critical components. One of the key things is that the tuning itself has been done by Dirac. The hardware that we’re using is also important, so we use 7-magnet front firing speakers, which are symmetrical. Each of these speakers is powered by an individual amp, and then the other important thing is that there are other technologies which are built in by Dirac from an auditory perspective. One of the most important ones is actually crosstalk cancellation and what it does is that the net effect of the technology gets you proper stereo effect on speakers, which are just usually five to six inches apart. When the speakers are large, and they have a large distance between each other, it’s easier to get a stereo effect. But on our set of speakers, which are so close to each other, to get that stereo which gives users a clear-cut orientation of direction is very important in many gaming situations, such as finding out the direction from which an enemy is approaching. Then, there are other sound tuning technologies like, artificial bass overtones, which are added. The system is highly capable in terms of suppressing distortion to give very high quality output, which is why the audio on ROG phone with the GameFx system sounds so great. Apart from that, we’ve not made compromises as the ROG Phone 5s series has a 3.5 mm headphone jack with a Hi-Fi grade ESS DAC, which gives users a high-quality audio output that can support very high degree of ohms, and thus high-end high-fidelity headsets is supported on the phone. Along with that, even when you put the regular fan, you have the capability to plug in your 3.5 mm jack even in the horizontal mode as well. So the kind of audio capabilities that have been built on this phone are so outstanding that even a person who’s an audiophile, apart from being a gamer should actually ideally go for this variant.

This does seem interesting. So, It’s not like you’ve tried to eliminate the headphone aspect, instead the GameFx system just enhances your audio experience overall.

Correct.

So, another thing that’s returning with the ROG Phone 5s series is the X-mode in the performance manager. How is that going to help gamers add in some customizations, and what is it that they are getting to change and control while playing their favorite games?

I think X-mode and X-mode+, the two performance enhancement modes are the more standard settings in the phone for higher performance. X-mode operates when the fan is not there and X-mode+ works when you also have the fan. So, when you actually utilize X-mode or X-mode+, all system tunings have been set to max performance like the processor, the touch sensitivity, and all those kinds of things are put on max performance to make sure the gameplay goes to the next level. Now, coming to the custom mode, there’s the armory crate with advanced settings, where at a game level there’s so much control offered, in terms of how users want to set the whole hardware, and the whole functioning of the phone to be tuned to their requirement on a particular game is just outstanding, like an enormous number of controls are given to the end user, and the good thing about it is that the system has been designed in a manner, that once you start a particular game, all the settings that you set for it would activate at that moment.

I know PC users do this with their own settings in terms of binds and everything, and I think this is brilliant as well.

Yes. In fact, armory crate is the same name of the application which is used for tuning on the ROG laptops as well.

One more question about the phone. I get that India is dominant on mobile gaming. But slowly, everyone around the globe is moving towards mobile gaming as well with cloud gaming technologies coming into play like xCloud. I personally would want to experience every kind of game that I want to play on a PC and on a smartphone. So how is ASUS looking to capitalize on that? Is there a plan in place to enhance that performance as well?

The ROG Phone already supports Google stadia. Then there’s a partnership with Unity engine. If you look at at PC games, many of them are under development stages for being available on a smartphone as well because its market size would go up tremendously if they were offered on a mobile device. Therefore, I think the ROG ecosystem is quite connected with a lot of developers on the PC gaming side, because we work with them closely, and you see a lot of PC games being migrated to smartphones, So we’re already, you’re already in tune with the ecosystem, we know what’s happening and we are in touch with a lot of developers to understand what is expected and give them the right kind of inputs to fine tune their games to work on our smartphones. So there is definitely a cutting edge capability that we have in the organization to enable that for our consumers.

Obviously, the biggest titles that will be played on ROG smartphones are BGMI, Free Fire and all the popular Esports Battle Royale games. So, what is the one feature you think players of these titles will be most excited about?

Personally, I would not say any particular feature. But one of the key differentiated features for a casual gamer would be the AirTriggers, because of the comfort that it gives you while gaming and along with that, your ability to play the game becomes much better. So as a casual gamer that’s quite exciting. You also get a phone with great touch, display and audio while also not having to worry the game stopping because of battery trouble. So many things have been built into this phone like side charging capability to charge and play together. But in the end, I think one of the key cutting edge feature that people love is the AirTriggers.

India is on a very good growth trajectory in terms of Esports, especially in the mobile sector. So how do you think ASUS’ involvement in this sector will evolve? It’s obviously going to increase. But is there like a plan in place to increase involvement with the big Esports organizations or the developers themselves?

Okay, that’s a very, very good question. In fact, we recently announced our first ever ‘open-to-all’ eSports tournament. Plus, on a weekly basis, we have the Battle of Gods for our ROG Phone customers, where they get to play Esports against each other with prizes worth Rs. 55,000 distributed every weekend, and it has already completed 36 weeks. Now we are opening up the tournament, okay to all everyone with the ROG League of Champions. The thought process behind this is actually twofold as it’s not just to entice gamers with the prize pool on offer. But it is also to identify the next set of talent, which can be groomed to become future Esports champions. So, the effort from our side is that with the League of Champions, we want to identify teams, who have the potential to become the next big teams in India, equip them with ROG Phones, and get them coaching from some of the top Esports players in the country. With that kind of guidance, we enable them to get the motivation, aspiration and insights on what it takes to become an Esports champion. Moreover, our endeavr is to work with all the Esports teams in India enable them with our smartphones, and help the budding talent because we believe Esports is the future, and mobile Esports especially will become bigger. In the end, there is a lot of opportunity for good players to become stars and future influencers, and we want to be key enablers for that ecosystem growth.

So, ASUS is all in for Esports?

All in.

That’s brilliant. Also, just a follow up on that. Does this mean that the ROG academy will be expanded in some way?

Yes, so currently ROG Academy has been started for laptop PC gamers. With the League of Champions, we are attempting to take the benefit of ROG Academy to the mobile players as well. But I think with physical boot camps taking place in safer environment, it opens up a lot more opportunities for us in the near future to extend the ROG Academy benefits to smartphone gaming as well.