“According to the latest Counterpoint report, sales volumes for Chinese brands grew 20 percent YoY, even as Indian smartphone market grew only 4 percent”
Coupled with innovation and multi-pronged expansion strategy, Chinese smartphone makers continue to dominate the India smartphone market.
According to the latest Counterpoint’s Market Monitor research, the market share of Chinese brands has reached a record 66% during the first quarter of this year Driven by new product launches, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi remained at the top of the smartphone market share table with a 29% share, witnessing a decline of 2% in comparison to the same period last year.
The Chinese brands grew 20% year-on-year (YoY) riding mainly on the growth of smartphones brands such as Vivo, Realme and OPPO. Vivo’s volume grew 119% whereas OPPO witnessed a growth of 28% YoY.
Source: counterpointresearch
Earlier in February, Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain claimed that the Chinese smartphone maker is 54 percent bigger than the second brand in the competition.
Down by 3% YoY, Samsung’s smartphone shipment market share dropped slightly to 23% in the previous quarter. However, the company is said to have gained some moment in the feature phone market with an increase from 10% in Q1 2018, to 15% in Q1 2019.
Jio still dominates the feature phone segment with a staggering 30% market share. The report further notes that the company’s Galaxy S10 series is doing well in the country, driving up its Average Selling Price (ASP) in the region.
Other brands that managed to do well in the Indian market include brands like ASUS, especially in the budget segment, thanks to its Zenfone series. Tecno, and Nokia HMD are doing well too. The rise in the market share of Chinese brands has drastically led to the decline of the Indian brand shipments. The previous quarter recorded the lowest ever market share of shipments from local Indian brands in recent years.
Anshika Jain, the Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research, pointed out that all the major brands have naturally expanded their footprint in offline channels to gain market share this year.
Source: counterpointresearch
Tarun Pathak, the associate director of Counterpoint Research, stated, “Users (are) spending more and more on their purchase which is driving up the overall average selling price in the market. As a result of this, the premium specs are now diffusing tremendously into the mid-tier price brands. We estimate this trend to continue leading to a competitive mid-tier segment in coming quarters.”
He expects these trends to continue in the future in the mid-tier segment.
Finally, most of the smartphone companies are making a strong push into retail sales. Xiaomi, OnePlus, and even Realme benefitted from an increased focus on brick and mortar stores. So, we could expect the strategy to continue in the coming quarters.
India is believed to be one of the largest volume electronics markets that still offers a good scope of growth for companies in the smartphone space, as expansion scope in China and USA has drastically dried up due to market saturation. We should expect this pace to continue through 2019 with Chinese brands leading the pack unless a dramatic shakeup ensues.
