Executive Interview: Joseph Ram, CEO of Infosonics

Joseph Ram, Director, Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer. In 1994, Mr. Ram founded InfoSonics Corporation as a distribution center for telecommunications and business systems. Previously, between 1989 and 1993, as sales director for ProCom Supply, Mr. Ram was in charge of worldwide purchasing and oversaw all international sales. Droid Report recently interviewed Joseph about his current role as CEO and discussed insights.

Joseph Ram

Droid Report: Hello Joseph, could you tell us more about your role as CEO of InfoSonics?

Joseph Ram: I define and chart the company’s vision, identifying positive and negative trends that could impact the company’s future. It’s important to capture positive trends and implement them while you try to steer the organization from the potential threats.

In addition, I am involved in many daily operations such as product development and marketing, choosing the best products for the markets we participate in. I also work closely with our sales teams on future projections that include identifying evolving trends and opportunities in each of our markets.

Droid Report: What are your initiatives for 2014?

Joseph Ram: 1. Products – To enhance our current offerings to include more LTE products. To emphasize our focus on differentiated niches that we can capitalize on. Such segments include ruggedized phones and others. 2. Markets – To continue developing our U.S. market presence. 3. Finance – To increase the capital base of the company so we can take advantage of opportunities.

Last month, InfoSonics announced the release of its newest product, the verykool T742 KolorPad, a 7-inch Android tablet. Could you share some reasons why the company chose to move toward smartphones and tablets?

Joseph Ram: The move toward smartphones coincides with two trends in the emerging markets. One, the migration from feature phones to smartphones driven by improved supply chain and overall product cost.

Secondly, the need for network operators—our customers—to increase ARPU, and the migration of 2G products to 3G products.

In terms of tablets, we see tremendous opportunities for economically priced tablets in emerging and developed markets. These products are deployed as cheaper substitutes to computers and are used in every aspect of daily life.

Droid Report: How do you see organizations further evolving in the future with Android and mobile?

Joseph Ram: As a mobile company, we see incredible opportunities in this market, which keeps evolving. We also see a great transformation for the mobile device as it becomes the principal computing device for both business and personal use.

Droid Report: What are some of the challenges that companies in the industry are faced with today?

Joseph Ram: The speed in which the industry changes is incredibly challenging. Next, getting the trends right, the constant cost attrition of the product and the increased competition. These are all major, daily challenges for companies that want to compete in this industry.

Droid Report: Is there anything else you feel Android users and the Android market should know?

Joseph Ram: Because there are so many applications out there, we feel there will be more bundling of task-specific applications within the actual hardware. Partnerships and cooperation between app vendors with special utilities and hardware manufacturers will emerge. Reaching customers with new apps is getting tougher by the day. We see app vendors are willing to pay hardware manufacturers, such as verykool, to be featured on the main screen. We can expect exciting times ahead.

InfoSonics, headquartered in San Diego, California and founded in 1994, is the parent company of several subsidiaries dedicated to the design, development, manufacturing, sale and distribution of the company’s proprietary line of products under the verykool® brand. Our goal is to provide our customers with a broad selection of wireless handsets and other wireless solutions having an appealing industrial design, a full complement of traditional features and a number of unique features that, together, set our phones apart from the competition. We also provide dedicated service and support in the countries where our branded products are sold.

We would like to thank Joseph Ram for taking the time for this discussion and Infosonics.