The Indian smartphone market had seen Samsung as the table topper for a long time now. Now, the latest report from Canalys mentions that the two brands from China, Xiaomi and Vivo are inching closer to Samsung in the smartphone market in India. In the first quarter of 2017, the smartphone shipments came in at 27 million units. The year-on-year growth showed at about 12-percent during the end of the first quarter of the year.
When we talk of the market share, Samsung is still the leader with the number of shipments just over 6 million in the first quarter of 2017. The Galaxy J-series is what has given Samsung a good number of sales in the offline retail segment. A recent report from Strategy Analytics mentioned that Xiaomi is the most preferred brand among the smartphone buyers in India.
According to Canalys, Xiaomi had a share of about 14% of the shipments in India and that was about 4 million units in Q1 2017, and for the company, it was a 3% gain from the same period last year. Vivo, on the other side, had about 10% of the market share in the first quarter and the number of shipments was just under 3 million units.
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.
“vivo’s ability to drive sales by investing in marketing campaigns has seen it displace local vendors that once thrived in this space,” said Mo Jia, Research Analyst.
As for the first quarter of 2017, here are the top brands in the market.
- Samsung
- Xiaomi
- Vivo
- Lenovo / Motorola
- OPPO
In the second quarter, it should rather be a growth seen for the brands like Vivo and OPPO because of the offline marketing strategy and the partnerships they have done to promote during the IPL season.
