Xiaomi and Samsung now control nearly half of the Indian smartphone market

Xiaomi and Samsung now control nearly half of the Indian smartphone market, according to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service. Also, thanks to 37 percent QoQ and 18 percent YoY growth in the smartphone market, India temporarily overtook the US to become the world's second-largest smartphone market.

The study noted that Indian handset shipment reached an all-time high of over 84 million for the first time ever driven by strong sell-in of both feature phones and smartphones. In terms of performance during the quarter, smartphone shipments in India grew by 18 percent YoY while feature phone shipments declined by 4 percent YoY. Bulk of the growth was driven by online channels such as Flipkart’s Big Billion sale and Amazon’s Great Indian festival in September.

"This is the first time since 2012 that Samsung and Xiaomi have reached this level of combined share. Additionally, the quarter was marked with return to growth for local handset players such as Micromax and Lava in the smartphone segment," said Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research.

If we look at specific brands, Chinese brands' performance remained strong and contributed to more than half of the total smartphone shipments. It is their third consecutive quarter when their market share is well over 50 percent after they took over local players in the second half of 2016.

Notably, Indian brands like Micromax and Lava also grew 41 percent and 24 percent QoQ in the smartphone segment recovering from their all-time low during demonetization last year. Micromax Bharat 2 was the bestselling model in the sub $75 segment and three out of four mobile handsets shipped were “Made in India” during Q3 2017.

While Xiaomi, iTel, Oppo, Vivo and OnePlus were the fastest growing smartphone brands, affordable mid end segment (Rs 10,000- Rs 15,000) was the fastest growing segment driven by strong performance of Xiaomi, contributing to almost half of the shipments.

Premium segment (above Rs 30,000) grew record three times (YoY) during the third quarter owing to the strong performance of Apple, OnePlus, and Samsung. Qualcomm was the leader among smartphone chipset suppliers.