Just yesterday, a report from Canalys revealed that Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo are going great guns in the Indian market. And today, a research report from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service revealed that LTE installed base of handsets crossed 150 million till the end of Q2 2017. The report says that India is now only behind China and USA in the total LTE smartphones, and is estimated to surpass the USA in next one year.
In terms of performance during the quarter, smartphone shipments in India grew by modest 4% YoY in Q2 2017. Like China, the top five brands contributed to almost 70% of the total smartphone market. Although local brands grew during the quarter, they are still unable to find their place among the top five smartphone players for the third successive quarter.
Samsung remained the top brand in the smartphones shipped market share with 25.4% share, while Xiaomi achieved 15.5% share, followed by Vivo, Oppo, and Lenovo with 12.7%, 9.6%, and 6.8% share respectively. Lenovo market share also includes that of Motorola's.
Chinese brands performance remained steady and are now contributing to more than half of the total smartphone shipments. "It is their second successive quarter when their market share is well over 50% after they took over local players in 2H 2016," says Counterpoint in their report.
Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Gionee were the fastest growing smartphone brands in the quarter with strong offline push and advertising blitzkrieg. Furthermore, four out of five mobile handsets shipped were “Made in India” during Q2 2017. The government also introduced phased manufacturing program during the quarter to increase the local value addition which is currently pegged at a low 6%.
LTE capable smartphones contributed to 96% of smartphone shipments in Q2 2017. However, in terms of installed base almost half of the smartphones are still only 3G or 2G capable. Premium segment (>?30,000, US$465) remained flat QoQ during Q2 2017. Samsung retained the top position with a 55 % market share, followed by Apple at 30% market share. OnePlus, Oppo and Sony were the other players in this segment. Samsung grew 13% QoQ in the premium segment due to healthy demand for its flagship S8 series.
"Feature phone segment still holding strong in India and now with the announcement of LTE based smart feature phone “JioPhone” by Reliance Jio, we estimate that conversion from feature phones to smartphones is likely to slow down in short to mid-term. Qualcomm powered smartphones grew a healthy 40% YoY in Q2 2017. The demand for Qualcomm chipsets in mid segment by Chinese brands was the key reason for growth," said Counterpoint in the report.
Commenting on the top-selling smartphones, Associate Director Tarun Pathak, noted, “Xiaomi’s comeback can be attributed to strong demand for its sub-?10K portfolio, making the Redmi Note 4 the top-selling model in the first half of 2017. This is the first time any brand has been able to topple Samsung which has held the best-seller slot for its models over the last four years due to its enormous reach and scale!."
