Indian smartphone market crosses 30 million unit shipments

According to IDC’s Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments clocked 32.3 million units in Q3 2016 with 17.5 percentage growth over the previous quarter, maintaining its traction with 11 percent Year-on-Year growth. “This seasonal spike in third quarter can be attributed to the channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October,” said Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) IDC India. 

Lenovo Group, which constitutes almost a fourth of total online smartphone shipments, continues to lead online channel followed by Xiaomi. 

Samsung led the Indian smartphone market with 23 percentage share with 8 percent sequential growth followed by Lenovo Group (including Motorola) with 9.6 percent share of smartphones. Reliance Jio sustained its fifth position in the period despite a healthy 20.9 percent growth over previous quarter while Xiaomi debuted in top 5 as its shipments doubled over previous quarter. 

“Continuous investment from China based vendors on retail expansion and high decibel marketing has led to disruption in the plans of home-grown vendors to some extent,” added Jaipal Singh, Market Analyst (Client Devices), IDC India. Analysts said migration from feature phone to smartphone had slowed down, helping India-based vendors to maintain their dominance in overall mobile market.