Smartphones turn smarter in 2016

Emerging as a big force in the global smartphones market during 2015, India saw about 75 million devices being shipped in the first three quarters of the year. The pace of the blistering growth was further strengthened by the online channel as many handset makers added eCommerce only devices.

The strong pace is expected to help India replace the the US as the second largest market globally, after China.

"Smartphones as a category have grown at a phenomenal pace this year and this is across price points. In the coming year, there will be a lot of action in 4G as operators expand coverage.

"With 4G network rollout, India will become one of the biggest mobile internet markets in the world leading to the launch of many services that consumers can benefit from," homegrown Micromax co-founder Vikas Jain told us.

About 40 per cent of smartphones being shipped are already on 4G and more than 9 crore 4G subscribers and 18 crore 4G smartphones can be there by 2018, he added.

A major driver of this growth has been online sales.

"One in three smartphone in October was sold using the digital platform. With a lot of discounted offers, 'exclusive-to-online' products accounted for about 17 per cent of the total smartphone volumes, while the overall online including marketplace touched around 25 per cent of the volumes," he added.

The online platforms gave a lot of Chinese brands an easy launchpad for India without much investment in the distribution and service channels.

The year ahead would continue to see "intense action", especially in the entry-level smartphone market, as companies look to upgrade feature phone users. With 60 per cent of the user base still on feature phones, the expectation is that close to 70-80 million feature phone consumers will switch to affordable smartphones.

Mike Wang, CEO at OPPO Mobiles India, said the ongoing trend of affordable smartphones will continue in the coming year with launch of more mid-segment smartphones.

Year 2016 is also expected to see introduction of new brands like LeTV, a trend seen this year.

A trend that could become the mainstay in the year ahead could be services-laden smartphones.

The app ecosystem grew fast this year with users graduating from just using gaming apps to services-oriented apps like Ola and Uber to book cabs, foodpanda to order food to using mobile wallets like Paytm and Mobikwik.