Smartphones, TV sales break records in Diwali season despite slowdown

Despite several sectors facing economic slowdown, the consumer electronics industry broke all records to touch a new high in the Diwali sales season.

India saw a record shipment of 4.9 crore smartphones in the third quarter of 2019, driven by new launches, discounts and various pre-Diwali sales channels, even as the economic slowdown affected other sectors, according to Counterpoint Research.

With a 26 per cent market share, Chinese handset maker Xiaomi continued to dominate the India smartphone market. Players such as Realme, Vivo, itel and OnePlus were the fastest growing smartphone brands shipping record volumes.

Apple made an entry into the top 10 smartphone brands due to price cuts on iPhone XR along with good demand for its iPhone 11. Apple is set for a bumper festive season sales and the iPhone 11 series -- starting from Rs 58,900 -- has registered very strong demand from the consumers in the country.

In the smartphone category, there has been 15 times growth this year, led by brands like Samsung, OnePlus, Apple, Xiaomi and Vivo on Amazon.in.

The feature phone players such as itel, Lava and Karbonn registered positive annual growth despite the overall segment declined. itel emerged as the number two feature phone brand in Q3.

OnePlus said it gained a record Rs 1,500 crore in gross merchandise value (GMV) worth of sales during the ongoing Diwali sales across platforms. Riding on the success of the recently launched products including OnePlus Android TV, the company has emerged as the best-selling premium brand in both smart TV and smartphone categories on Amazon and offline partner stores.

Xiaomi announced that it achieved a record breaking sale of over 5 lakh Mi TVs in 24 days starting September 28. According to the company, this milestone is achieved across Diwali With Mi on mi.com, Flipkart, Amazon and all offline channels. Mi TV is the highest-selling TV on Amazon and Flipkart during the shopping festival. During the same period, Mi TV was also the highest selling TV across Amazon and Flipkart.

"Our Smart TV business was born in 2018 and it has flourished well in India. In a short span of time of three months since inception, we became the #1 Smart TV brand in India and have continued our streak for five consecutive quarters," said Eshwar Nilakantan, Category Lead-MiTV, Xiaomi India.