CMR India today released its Monthly Mobile Handset Market Review Report for the month of January 2018, and in the report, the firm research firm highlighted that Reliance Retail' sister brand, LYF is all set to dislodge Samsung from the overall market leader’s perch in Q1 2018. During the month, Reliance LYF brand topped the overall mobile handset leaderboard with 27% market share, followed by Samsung at a distant second with 12% share, and itel Mobile secured the third position with 8% market share. Also, the report added that feature phone handset brand shipments had a market share of 72%, while smartphone brands ended up with 28%.
CMR also said that on a YoY basis, feature phones saw a growth of 116%, and that's largely due to the affordably priced Reliance JioPhone.
During the last quarter of 2017, Reliance Retail managed to outsmart Samsung and other feature phone brands in the country, riding on the impeccable sales of JioPhone. And the same continued in the first month of 2018 as well. In January 2018 alone, LYF brand achieved 37.3% share, followed by itel Mobiles with 11% share and Samsung with 7%.
In January 2018, the smartphone leaderboard continued to be dominated by Xiaomi with 27% market share, while Samsung had a 25% market share, with Lava at third with 8% market share. Across smartphones and feature phones, 4G now has a 55% market share.
And here's a massive surprise. Oppo Electronics, which was one of the top four smartphone brands in India with 9% market share in January 2017 has now moved out of the smartphone leaderboard, ending with a market share of only 4%.
There's no doubt that Samsung is feeling the pressure in the Indian market, especially in the feature phone market. The company doesn't have any 4G feature phones to rival the Reliance JioPhone, but in the smartphone market, it continues to be a market leader securing 25% share, thanks to its aggressive marketing strategy.
Even though Xiaomi did not have any launch in January 2018, it managed to beat Samsung by a small margin. And Xiaomi' Q1 2018 shipments will be incredibly high as compared to those of Samsung's as the Chinese company is banking on the massive success of Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro. And reports suggest that Xiaomi is bringing a lot of new products to the Indian market on March 7, which will help the company extends its lead in the country.
