Smartphone market grows 229% in Q3: IDC

Falling prices of smartphones continued to grow this segment. The India smartphone market grew by 229% year over year (YoY) in the third quarter of 2013 (3Q13).

According to International Data Corporation’s (IDC) APEJ Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 12.8 million smartphones in 3Q13 compared to 3.8 million units in the same period of 2012. 3Q13 grew by close to 28% over the units shipped in the second quarter of 2013 (2Q13).
 
The 5.0inch-6.99inch screen size smartphones (phablets) continued to show sustained growth in 3Q2013 as well – the phablet category contributed to 23% in the overall market in terms of volume.

“The growth in the smartphone market continues to drive the overall growth numbers for the phone market – given that there’s still a huge potential for smartphone penetration in India, this trend is expected to continue in the coming quarters”, said Manasi Yadav, Senior Market Analyst with IDC India.

The overall mobile phone market (Feature Phones and Smartphones) had a 12% growth YoY and a 7% growth quarter over quarter (QoQ) with the share of feature phones sliding further to make 81% of the total market in 3Q13 despite the feature phone market growing at 3% in 3Q2013 over 2Q2013.

The third quarter of 2013 witnessed a slowdown in the numbers for top local vendors such as Micromax and Karbonn – while international vendors like Samsung and Nokia powered by their new product launches made up for close to 30% of the overall market in 3Q2013.

“The change agents for this rapid shift of consumer preference towards Smartphones have been the narrowing price gap between Feature phones and Smartphones. The Smartphone market is expected to maintain these elevated levels of growth in the near future” comments Kiran Kumar, Research Manager with IDC India.

Samsung continued to lead the market with 33% in terms of market share, followed by Micromax with 17% and Karbonn at 11%.