During the last quarter, Xiaomi took Samsung out of the top spot as the leading smartphone brand in India. The first quarter of 2018 saw Xiaomi continue its leadership, while Oppo and Vivo saw their market share fall.
The quarterly report of Counterpoint Research on the Indian smartphone market has highlighted the distribution of the market among the main brands in the country. Xiaomi leads the package at 31%, while Samsung follows at 26%. Oppo and Vivo have approximately 5% market share.
In addition to smartphones, they also analyzed the market distribution of companies that manufacture phones with special functions. It is not surprising that Jio remains at the top with 35.8% of the market within his fold. It does not mean that it is a small achievement, considering that the company has only been in the business of manufacturing phones for a little over a year.
In general, the mobile phone market doubled in India, while the smart phone market remained stagnant. Mobile phones, as a whole, grew 48%.
Same time, last year
If the Q1 2017 compares to the Q1 2018, then Xiaomi has seen a three-fold increase in its share of the smartphone market, while Samsung is at a similar level to the previous. On the other hand, Oppo and Vivo have seen their market share reduced by half, although they retain their positions.
The dispersion also seems to be converging with Indian customers who develop brand preferences for smartphones. This can be analyzed from the fact that users outside the top five brands seem to have dropped by 10%.
However, the niche communities around OnePlus, Motorola and Google Pixel can not be ruled out.
Although Nokia may not be on the list of major smartphone brands in India, it seems to be gaining ground in the feature-phone segment, with its market share shooting from 0 to 7.3% in less than a year .
Unfortunately, it can not be said for Samsung. The company is actually the biggest loser among its competitors, with a portion of feature phones that drops from 25% to just under 10%.
Samsung is not the only victim of the onslaught of JioPhones in the Indian market. The JioPhone offers a device at an incredibly low price with feature-rich 4G connectivity. As a result of the low prices that Jio has established in the telecommunications sector, the expansion and transactions in the Jio network have also contributed to the success of JioPhone.
While Jio and Xiaomi extend their market advantage, India's smartphone segments will continue to be the battleground for Chinese brands, Indian brands and international entities such as Nokia Mobiles to try to make their mark.
Each of them has tried to knock down the other with design features like the notch or emphasize the capabilities of their camera like the double-opening optics of the Samsung S9 or the Huawei P20 Pro with three rear cameras. Others are trying to eliminate Xiaomi's domain in the budget segment with offers like Asus Zenfone Max Pro M1 and Honor 9 Lite.