In February last year, the Indian smartphone market witnessed the highest growth globally. Xiaomi & Samsung grabbed 29.9 & 25.8% market share respectively. Brands like Vivo & OPPO took 3rd and 4th spots with 10.5% and 8.2% share. But it was a bad news BBK Electronic led company, Realme. The market share of Realme witnessed a sharp decline.
Xiaomi & Samsung increased their market share after the festive season starting from September till November 2019. While Realme became the only brand, which lost its market share to its competitors. (According to data rolled out by IDC). In fact, Xiaomi mobiles dominate the global wearables industry by 60% alone!
Realme’s shipments peaked in the festive season with a 16.74% market share but declined drastically in November & December as low as 9.3% & 8.23% in the same year. On the other hand, Xiaomi managed to cross the $5 billion revenue market in India.
Upasana Joshi, associate research manager IDC analyzed that most of the online sales take place during the festive season in India, which is the reason why Realme an online-focused brand saw a huge jump in sales during September month. 80% of Realme’s sales are still coming from online channels.
Xiaomi’s timing for launching Redmi Note 8 was a nice one, and then price cuts proved to be even more helpful.
“While the brand has grown after the festive season because they are spread across channels and came up with offers across offline & online channels” added by Upasana Joshi.
Xiaomi & Samsung saw a significant jump in sales due to the launch of the Redmi Note 8 series and Samsung Galaxy M30s. Xiaomi spokesperson revealed that October-December quarter was good for the company and they managed to sell around 1 million Redmi Note 8 series within a month of launch.
“M30s handset worked extremely well for Samsung in the online space and drove shipments for the brand” – Upasana said.
Conclusion:
The Indian smartphone market is highly competitive. While Samsung is the 1st brand in India that crosses more than $10 billion in revenue, Xiaomi is the largest exclusive brand network in India’s offline market.
Realme still has to learn a lot from its competitors especially in the Indian market that is highly competitive be it any point of time. There was a time when Realme was using Xiaomi’s strategy to take over Xiaomi in India.
In light of the upcoming election, the government is aiming to uplift smaller, offline trader and other domestic producers. This might lead to greater emphases on offline sales and country-wide offline-retail distribution networks. Which will give Samsung an advantage over Xiaomi and other online-oriented players?
