Samsung And Xiaomi Make Up For 45% Of Smartphone Market In India
Samsung and Xiaomi together constitute 45% of the smartphone market in India in Q3 of 2017. The smartphone grew 37% (quarter on quarter) and 18% (year on year) to temporarily surpass the US for the first time ever as the second largest smartphone market in the world. The number one spot i still retained by China. According to Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service, India’s mobile phone shipments reached an all time high of 84 million in 2017 thanks to a strong sale period of both feature and smartphones.
Samsung and Xiaomi together contributed to almost 45% of the smartphone market. This is the first time since 2012, that the top two brands have reached this level of combined share, signalling that key brands are ramping up their presence in India. Additionally, the quarter was marked with return to growth for local handset players such as Micromax and Lava in the smartphone segment.
Affordable mid-end segment (Rs. 10,000 – Rs. 15,000) was the fastest growing segment thanks largely to a strong performance of Xiaomi which contributed to almost half of the shipments. Three of the top five best selling smartphones in India were from Xiaomi alone.
Commenting on the findings, Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research said,
India continues to be an attractive destination for handset OEMs. With strong smartphone growth and a sizeable feature phone market for at least three to four years, OEMs in India can target a diverse set of audiences. This has allowed a number of OEM’s to still realise double digit growth in the feature phone segment in spite of being absent in the smartphone segment.
Chinese smartphone brands have a third consecutive year when their market share is over 50% in India. Indian brands like Micromax and Lava grew 41% and 24% (quarter on quarter), respectively, in the smartphone market after recovering from their all-time low performance after demonetization in 2016. Micromax Bharat 2 was the bestselling phone in the sub-Rs 5000 segment. Xiaomi, iTel, Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus were the fastest growing smartphone brands during the third quarter which is largely due to the festive sales and attractive discounts.
Because of the strong performance of Apple, OnePlus, and Samsung, the premium segment (above Rs. 30,000) grew record three times (year on year) during Q3 of 2017.
