India smartphone market grew 5.2 percent to 109.1 million units in 2016, said IDC.

Smartphone shipments clocked 25.8 million units in Q4 2016, posting flat growth as compared to Q4 2015 and 20.3 percent drop over the previous quarter — mainly due to a seasonal decline after a festival quarter and demonetization in November.

“This is relatively lower than expected smartphone shipments for India owing to sluggish first half and demonetisation at the end of year,” said Karthik J, senior market analyst, Client Devices, IDC India.

IDC said the migration of feature phone to smartphone has slowed down as prices of smartphones are quite high for a feature phone user. Ease of use, long battery life and durability of feature phones continue to be relevant for large numbers of users of this category.

The share of China-based vendors touched 46 percent in Q42016, as their shipments doubled over the same period last year. The share of Indian vendors slipped to 19 percent.

No Indian companies are in the top 5 position in the Indian smartphone market.

“The decision of sticking with a 3G-heavy portfolio and prioritising the price game over product experience is working against the dominance of homegrown vendors,” said Jaipal Singh, market analyst, Client Devices, IDC India.

China’s Transsion Group, which entered the Indian market in Q2 2016 with “itel” brand, climbed to the second spot in the overall mobile phone market with shipments of feature phones in Q4 2016. Transsion is expected to launch few more brands in the later half the year within the same price bands where Indian vendors are competing.

Feature phones achieved annual shipments of 136.1 million units. The category declined by 9.4 percent in 2016 as compared to 16.2 percent in 2015.

Online sales in the smartphone market remained at 31.2 percent in Q4 2016 with Xiaomi and Lenovo accounting for more than half of the channel’s volume. Online smartphone shipments volume grew over 10 percent annually in 2016.

Samsung is leading the smartphone market with 25.1 percent share despite 13.1 percent sequential decline in Q4 2016. Samsung’s annual shipments grew 3.2 percent in 2016 driven by J-series. The J2 continues to be a key contributor for Samsung, accounting for almost half of vendor’s shipments in Q4 2016.

Xiaomi climbed up to second place with 10.7 percent share in Q4 2016 against 3.3 percent share in the same period last year. Year-on-year shipments grew threefold while sequential growth was 15.3 percent in Q4 2016. Xiaomi expanded its retail presence with the launch of an exclusive model for offline channels in Q4 2016.

Lenovo slipped to 3rd place as shipments declined 17.4 percent sequentially in Q4 2016 and 14.5 percent over Q4 2015. Motorola’s E3 Power and Lenovo’s K5 series accounted for almost half Lenovo’s shipments in Q42016.

OPPO made it to the top 5 list in Q4 2016 with 8.6 percent share. OPPO has achieved 29.9 percent sequential growth in Q4 2016.

Vivo, another Chinese brand, has dethroned Reliance Jio from 5th place by clocking 50.8 percent sequential growth in Q4 2016 with 7.6 percent share.  OPPO’s growth was more than 4 times in 2016 over the previous year.