During the last quarter, Xiaomi bumped Samsung off the number one spot as the leading smartphone brand in India. Q1 2018 saw Xiaomi continuing its lead while Oppo and Vivo saw their market share fall.
The quarterly report by Counterpoint Research on the Indian smartphone market has highlighted the market distribution between the leading brands in the country. Xiaomi leads the pack at 31% while Samsung follows at 26%. Oppo and Vivo both have approximately 5% market share.
Aside from smartphones, they’ve also analysed the market distribution of companies that manufacture feature phones. It’s no surprise that Jio is still on top with 35.8% of the market within its fold. Not to say that it’s a small accomplishment, considering that the company has only been in the business of making phones for a little more than a year.
Overall, the feature phone market actually doubled in India while the smartphone market remained stagnant. Mobile phones, together, grew 48%.
Same time, last year
If Q1 2017 is compared to Q1 2018, then Xiaomi has seen a three-fold increase in its portion of the smartphone market, while Samsung is at a similar level as before. On the other hand, Oppo and Vivo have both seen their market share halved though they retain their positions.
The scatter also seems to be converging with Indian customers developing brand preferences for smartphones. This can be analysed from the fact that users outside the top five brands seem to have dropped 10%.
Nonetheless, the niche communities around the OnePlus, Motorola and Google Pixel can't be discounted.
Though Nokia may not be on the list of the top smartphone brands in India, they seem to be gaining ground in the feature phone segment with their market share shooting up from 0 to 7.3% in under a year.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Samsung. The company is actually the biggest loser among its competitors with the portion of feature phones shrinking from 25% to just under 10%.
Samsung isn’t the lone victim of the onslaught of JioPhones in the Indian market. The JioPhone offers an incredibly low priced device with 4G connectivity that’s feature rich. Following from the low prices that Jio has set in the telecom space, the expansion and deals on the Jio network have also fed into the success of the JioPhone.
While Jio and Xiaomi widen their lead in the market, the Indian smartphone segments will continue to be the battleground for Chinese brands, Indian brands and international entities like Nokia Mobiles trying to make their mark.
Each of them has tried to topple the other with design features like the notch or emphasising its camera capabilities like the dual aperture optics of the Samsung S9 or the Huawei P20 Pro with three rear cameras. Others are trying to remove Xiaomi’s dominance in the budget segment with offerings like the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 and the Honor 9 Lite.
