India smartphone market size for 2015 revealed by IDC

India smartphone market 2015
Research firm IDC has revealed the size of the India smartphone market for 2015.

Device vendors shipped 103.6 million (+28.8 percent) smartphones in 2015 and 25.6 million units (+15.4 percent) in Q4 2015, according to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker issued on Monday.

Karthik J, senior market analyst, Client Devices at IDC, said the online share of smartphone shipments on Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon platforms rose 2.5 times to 37.3 percent in Q4 2015.

Chinese vendor’s smartphone shipment rose 71 percent in Q4 2015.

“Almost 1 in 2 smartphones shipped in Q4 2015 were locally manufactured in India and we expect this to increase further as more vendors are likely to join this bandwagon to benefit from subsidies and be more price competitive,” Jaipal Singh, market analyst, Client Devices says at IDC.

4G smartphones shipment grew to 13.9 million units accounting for more than half of the market in Q4 2015. Samsung and Lenovo together account for more than half of 4G volumes. Shipments from Reliance Jio started in Q4 Q4, incrementally contributing to LTE share in India.

India smartphone market share of Samsung was 26.8 percent in Q4. Samsung’s J series contributed to over two-third of its total shipments. On5 and On7 models strengthened online portfolio further, while the J5 and J7 were made available in offline channel as well.

Micromax had 14.1 percent smartphone market share in Q4 2015. Its shipments fell 12.1 percent year on year and 23.5 percent over previous quarter. Micromax’s 4G smartphone share increased to 27 percent.

Lenovo has overtaken Intex to become the third largest smartphone vendor in India. The Chinese phone maker has 11.6 percent share in India. Lenovo shipments almost tripled in Q4 2015. K3 Note is the top selling model for Lenovo.

Intex fell to the fourth position, though shipments grew 40.9 percent in Q4 2015. Intex growth was due to 3G smartphones in sub $100 segment.

Lava posted 20 percent growth to become the top five device vendor by focusing on 4G phone shipments from their Xolo series.

The share of smartphones in the overall mobile phone market was around 40 percent in 2015. The sale of smartphone will overtake feature phone in 2016. At least one in two smartphones shipped in India will be a 4G enabled device.

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