Xiaomi is dominating the Indian smartphone market to a good extent but is still unable to surpass the South Korean smartphone giant to become the number one smartphone brand in the country. As per a new report released by the Singapore-based research firm Canalys, Samsung is still the number one smartphone brand in the country in terms of quarterly shipments, followed by Xiaomi, Vivo, Lenovo, and Oppo.
While Samsung managed to ship close to 6 million devices in Q1 2017, Xiaomi fell short by managing to send around 4 million devices, which is less by 2 million when compared to Samsung’s number and that’s not a small one either.
“Xiaomi’s success in India is underscored by its online go-to-market strategy. Demonetization seems to have had no impact on it, as its target customer is young, Internet-enabled and primarily buys online,” said Canalys Research Analyst Ishan Dutt.
Samsung has broad smartphone portfolio than any other brand in the country. Xiaomi’s success can be attributed to just three to four devices, but Samsung has an array of products in the sub-Rs. 20,000 price bracket, where Xiaomi excels. Xiaomi has no device in the flagship category now as the Mi 5 is a year old one. Even though the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge are old too, they are still being purchased by a lot of customers.
The report also states that Xiaomi’s shipments have increased by three percent and currently stands at 14 percent from the previous 11 percent in Q1 2016.
Following Xiaomi is it’s counterpart Vivo. Xiaomi has an online-only flash model sales, but off late, the company has entered offline segment as well. That isn’t the case with Vivo as the firm has a strong offline presence and the Vivo IPL marketing is heavily helping them for being successful in the country.
Vivo managed to get double figure shipments in Q1 2017 as the company has shipped close to three million units both offline and online combinedly. “Vivo was just shy of shipping 3 million smartphones in the quarter. Its strategy to focus on the highly fragmented ‘unorganized’ retail market is paying off,” said Mo Jia, Research Analyst. “It's ability to drive sales by investing in marketing campaigns has seen it displace local vendors that once thrived in this space.” she further added.
Another Chinese smartphone brand, Lenovo, which settled at fifth place at the end of December stood at fourth place dethroning one more Chinese brand Oppo, which now secured fifth place. The total smartphone shipments in India reached as high as 27 million, states the report.
