The Indian smartphone market has crossed the 30 million unit shipment mark for the first time ever in the third quarter of 2016, the International Data Corp (IDC) reported on Tuesday. IDC says India is maintaining its healthy traction with 11 percent Year-on-Year growth in a quarter.
While the Indian smartphone market is on the rise, the Chinese smartphone brands like Lenovo and Xiaomi are gaining the market shares. Looking at the numbers, the home-grown brand, Micromax has witnessed a drastically fall in its shipments in the quarter.
The research firm revealed that the smartphone shipments in Q3 2016 have been clocked to 32.3 million units with a 17.5 percent growth over the prior quarter.
“This seasonal spike in the 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.
IDC added that the online share of smartphones has been surpassed to 31.6 percent as the key players, particularly from China, are making strong performance in the online smartphone market. Also, the closing weeks of the quarter observed increased supplies due to the online festival sales in October. Many vendors were preparing their inventories during this period.
Lenovo mobiles continued to be the key player in online channel chased by Xiaomi. The Lenovo Group has recorded for roughly one-fourth of the total online shipments which had driven mainly by Lenovo K5 series and Motorola G4 series of smartphones. Furthermore, Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and the newly launched Redmi 3S accelerated the online shipments to a great extent, Karthik added.
The 4G smartphone shipments have increased in India by 24.8 percent in CY Q3, 2016 over the previous quarter. The launch of Reliance Jio services has further increased the share of 4G VoLTE mobiles in India. Almost 70 percent of smartphones shipped in Q3, 2016 were 4G enabled, while, 90 percent of the smartphones sold by eTailers were 4G enabled.
Smartphone Vendor Highlights
Samsung mobile is the foremost player in Indian smartphone market witnessing 23 percent share with 8 percent sequential growth and 9.7 percent YoY growth for the same period. Even though the recall of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has affected the company to a large extent, multiple new launches in both offline and online channels, helped the company to maintain a strong portfolio in CY Q3, 2016. Samsung Galaxy J2 continues to be the major contributor for the company.
Lenovo Group (including Motorola mobiles) managed to climb the second place with 9.6 percent share of smartphones. The company has witnessed 46.1 percent growth over the previous quarter in CY Q3 2016 in terms of shipment. The newly launched E3 Power and G4 smartphones driven volume for Motorola, while, the K5 series contributed over 40 percent of the total volume for Lenovo.
Micromax mobiles dropped to the third position in smartphone shipments with 32 percent decline over the previous quarter.
Xiaomi mobiles managed to debut in top 5 smartphone vendors as its shipments doubled over the previous quarter. The company has grown 2.5 times more than the same period last year.
Reliance Jio has sustained its fifth place with a healthy 20.9 percent growth in CY Q3, 2016 over the previous quarter. The shipments of Lyf mobiles saw a sharp demand due to Reliance Jio’s attractive introductory offer.
