China-based smartphones — led by Xiaomi — will be giving tough competition to Samsung in India in 2017.
But the Korean phone maker will continue its dominance in India in the current year, said CMR. Samsung dominated the Indian market in the last 6 years despite the arrival of several Indian and China phone brands.
Xiaomi has 16.2 percent share against Samsung’s share of 18.7 percent in the second quarter of 2017. The smartphone share of Vivo is 13.2 percent, while Oppo has 9.2 percent and Lenovo has 8.3 percent.
Lenovo, which had the potential to take on Samsung, lost considerable share due to lack of technology innovation and marketing strategies.
Prominent Chinese smartphone brands in India are Huawei, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Vivo and Oppo. Xiaomi, Lenovo, Vivo and Oppo achieved growth in the range of 7 – 33 percent in smartphone market in India.
Juha Winter said Xiaomi captured the top spot on the list of best-selling smartphones in India in the second quarter of 2017. This time, the fast-growing Chinese company also captured the no.3 and no.6 spots, making for a very strong presence in the top-10.
In Q1, Xiaomi had one device more on the top-10 list, and one device was also different from the Q2 ones.
“What’s more dramatic is that several models particularly from Vivo but also from Oppo are within striking distance of the top of the list, and the top-5..20 models in particular are heavily populated by these brands,” Juha Winter said.
The size of the India phone market was 61.8 million mobiles in Q2 2017 with 54 percent coming from feature phones that achieved 9 percent sequential growth.
The above chart prepared by CMR shows that Indian phone makers such as Micromaax, Lava and Karbonn are not in the top 5 list for smartphone brands.
“Since all of them are still showing strong market fundamentals, it appears difficult that one or a few among them will take a substantial lead for a longer horizon and hence will be competing neck to neck,” said Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst, Telecom and ESDM, CMR.
The entry level market of smartphone will see some growth primarily due to attempts by various handset makers to counter the emergence of 4G feature phones.
Foxconn owned Rising Star India overtook Samsung as the # 1 ODM for smartphones making phones in India. Samsung continues to be the overall leader ODM in country.
The market will be flat in 2017. There should be a replacement of certain volumes of feature phones as well as smartphones for 4G feature phone. This could impact volume sales of feature phones in the range of 25-30 percent and for smartphones the offset could be 5-6 percent, according to Thomas George, SVP & Head CMR.
