Smartphone shipment crossed 30 Million mark in India for the first time ever in a quarter in CY Q3 2016 maintaining its healthy traction with 11 percent Year-on-Year growth, says IDC.
Precisely, smartphone shipments clocked 32.3 million units, a 17.5 percentage growth over the previous quarter, says IDC.
Samsung leads the Indian smartphone market with 23 percentage share with 8 percent sequential growth and 9.7 percent growth from the same period last year.
Despite the recall of Samsung’s flagship Note 7, multiple new launches across both offline and online channels added onto its strong portfolio helped vendor to grow at a healthy rate in CY Q3 2016, IDC said.
Lenovo Group (including Motorola) climbed to second place with 9.6 percent share of smartphones. Similar to the Q3 2015 trend, Lenovo Group’s shipment spiked in Q3 2016 with growth of 46.1 percent over previous quarter.
Motorola’s volume almost doubled Quarter-on-Quarter driven by newly launched E3 Power and G4 models. K5 series continues to be lead runner for Lenovo accounting for over 40 percent of its total volume.
Micromax slips to third position with a 32 percent decline in smartphone shipments over previous quarter. Vendor is facing tremendous pressure from other local vendors in sub US$ 100 segment and with Chinese players in US$100-150.
Xiaomi makes its debut in top 5 as its shipments doubled over previous quarter. With primary focus on online and minimalistic product portfolio, vendor has grown more than 2.5 times over the same period last year.
Reliance Jio sustains its fifth position in CY Q3 2016 despite a healthy 20.9 percent growth over previous quarter.
“This seasonal spike in third quarter of the year can be attributed to the channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October” says Karthik J, senior market analyst, Client Devices, IDC India.
Online share of smartphone increased to 31.6 percent with impressive 35 percent QoQ growth due to strong performance by key online players primarily from China-based vendors.
Also, closing weeks of the quarter witnessed incremental supplies as many vendors were preparing their inventories for the online festival sales in October.
Lenovo Group continues to lead online channel followed by Xiaomi. Lenovo Group accounts for almost one-fourth of total online smartphone shipments driven primarily by Lenovo’s K5 series and Motorola’s G4 series models.
Also, Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 3 and newly launched Redmi 3S fuelled the online shipments to a large extent, according to Karthik.
4G smartphone shipments grew 24.8 percent over previous quarter in CY Q3 2016. Rollout of Reliance Jio network has further increased the share of 4G enabled smartphones in India. Seven out of 10 smartphone shipped in Q3 2016 were 4G enabled and 9 out of 10 smartphone sold by eTailers were 4G.
Overall mobile phone market shipments closed at 72.3 Million units in CY Q3 2016 with an 18.1 percent sequential growth. Feature phones registered 39.9 Million units in CY Q3 2016 with a healthy 18.6 percent quarter-over-quarter growth. However, feature phones market declined at 12.4 percent over the same period last year, pulling down the overall mobile phone shipments marginally by 3.3 percent.
“Mobile vendor ecosystem is going through a multi-dimensional transition. Continuous investment from China based vendors on retail expansion and high decibel marketing has led to disruption in the plans of home-grown vendors to some extent. To remain relevant, home-grown vendors are counting on the feature phone market even though they are facing certain supply issues for a few components” says Jaipal Singh, market analyst, Client Devices, IDC India. “Also, vendors are relooking at the channel strategy by getting lower tier distributors on-board, positioning more staff at storefronts and adopting the right mix of products in both online and offline channels” adds Singh.
Migration from feature phone to smartphone has slowed down, helping India based vendors to maintain their dominance in overall mobile market. Though feature phone market is consolidated with few key vendors, it is also witnessing the emergence of new brands. Itel in its second quarter in Indian market has quadrupled its shipments while Zen mobile shipments have more than doubled over the previous quarter.
Source: IDC
