Indian smartphones market to see a ‘Do or Die’ moment in 2017

GURGAON, INDIA: CMR’s India Annual Mobile Handset Market Review says that Samsung garnered 33% market share during the year with its revenues standing at INR 453,713 million, followed by Apple (8%) and Lenovo (7%) with INR 112,975 million and INR 99,806 million revenues respectively.

Among domestic players, Micromax, Intex, LYF and Lava made it to top 10 list, with 6.23%, 4.26%, 3.67%, and 3.38% markets shares, respectively.

The market recorded a 22% rise in revenues at INR 1,359,975 million in CY 2016 as against INR 1,117,571 million in CY 2015.

CMR believes, 2017 is going to be a disruptive year as vendors come out with their unique propositions such as more RAM, higher battery capacities, among others.

The INR 5K-10K market is going to see some new specs and upgrades. In the premium segment, new models of Samsung, Apple and OnePlus would be worth to watch.

The re-entry of Nokia in smartphones and exist of smaller players will be some of the important factors driving the Indian Mobile Handset Market.

The buzz would be around making the feature phones smarter with upgraded cameras and introduction of new features. The 4G-capable feature phone is, however, going to cannibalize the below INR 5K smartphone market.

Although, the revenues from feature phones constitute a very small chunk of around 14%, in terms of volume they hold about 57% of the market. Overall, there’s a scope to play around feature phones and brands like itel, Zen and Ziox would get aggressive in this space.

In a nutshell, 2017 is going to be a ‘Do or Die’ year for many of the brands.

Indian brands vs. Chinese brands:

‘Make in India’ has provided the right impetus to the mobile manufacturing in the country. Today, about 66% of the total shipments are domestic manufacturing, in 2017, the share would touch 90%.

The war between domestic brands (Micromax, Intex, Lava, Karbonn) and Chinese brands(Lenovo, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi) is going to be aggressive.

The Indian players would look forward to INR 6K-INR 10K smartphone market, where they will primarily fight it out with Xiaomi and Lenovo, having wide portfolio in this segment as well.

Indian brands need to brace themselves up for a terrific war against the Chinese players. In CY 2016, in terms of volume the total market share of domestic brands stood at 35%, while for Chinese brands it was at 10%. However, in terms of value, they managed to beat domestic brands, with the combined revenue of former standing at 22% as against 17% of latter.

Rise of 4G:

In CY 2016, 4G constituted about 69% of total smartphone shipments, while 3G was 29%. In CY 2017, 4G is all set to cover near 100% of smartphones.

The 4G revenues of the industry increased by over 100% to INR 992,74 million in CY 2016, while 3G declined by about 60% to INR 165,978 million.