Apple leads Indian 4G smartphone market, ahead of HTC and Samsung

Apple leads the Indian 4G smartphone market with 45 percent share in Q4 2014, followed by HTC at 19 percent and Samsung at 16 percent.

In the 4G tablets market, Apple again leads with 70.6 percent share in Q4 201r, followed by Lenovo with 28.7 percent. HP is the third tablet player with a relatively insignificant presence.

Alcatel leads the LTE datacard market with 83 percent share, while Huawei has the remaining 17 percent.

Apple is leading the overall LTE device market — smartphones, tablets and data cards — during the fourth quarter of 2014, said CMR.

Samsung, HTC, Micromax are some of the LTE device players in India. Indian brands had marginal share of 0.1 percent of LTE device shipments in Q4 2014.

The total LTE device shipments in the country touched 1.06 million units during Q4 2014. The share of LTE smartphones was 96 percent, LTE tablets was 3 percent and 4G data cards was 1 percent in India.

LTE shipments in 2014 in India by CMR

Vikrant Singh, analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice said: “The up-tick in 4G-enabled device shipments in India, especially Smartphones, shows that it makes the right business proposition for other home-grown brands like Lava, Karbonn and Intex to foray into the LTE devices market.”

In the overall India LTE smartphone chipset market, Apple was the leader with 45 percent share in the fourth quarter.

Qualcomm leads the non-proprietary LTE Chipset market in India with 44 percent share of LTE smartphone shipments in Q4 2014.

Close to 20 brands have shipped LTE devices into the India market, said the report.

Of the total LTE Smartphones shipped in India during Q4 2014, 15 percent were exclusively sold online through retail e-commerce portals.

Xiaomi and OnePlus garnered market shares of 24 percent and 12 percent, respectively during December 2014.

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