Samsung leads Indian handset market in Q2: IDC report

The handset market in India is led by Samsung, followed by Micromax in the second position -- but according to International Data Corporation (IDC), given the current growth rates, there is a real possibility of seeing vendor positions change in the remaining quarters this year.

"While Samsung has held on to its leadership position in the market, it is noteworthy that Micromax is growing faster. Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively, and also needs a blockbuster product at the high end to regain momentum.

"Given the current growth rates, there is a real possibility of seeing vendor positions change in the remaining quarters this year," said Jaideep Mehta, vice president and general manager - South Asia, IDC.

In the second quarter (April-June) 2014, Samsung clocked 29 percent marketshare followed by Micromax with 18 percent of the marketshare. The other handset makers which figured in the top five positions were Karbonn, Lava and Motorola.

According to IDC, the overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in the second quarter in 2014, which is a 5 percent quarter-on-quarter growth against first quarter (January-March) 2014. It attributed the growth to both the product categories - smartphones and feature phones.

The report said smartphone market in India has maintained its growth impetus with smartphone shipments touching year-on-year growth of 84 percent in the second quarter and a quarterly growth of 11 percent. The potential for growth in the smartphone market is quite high as 71 percent of the market continues to be on feature phones.

"IDC observes that a new entry level price point is being breached by the Indian home grown vendors every quarter. These devices are not equipped with high-end specifications and RAM is typically 256 MB. This ultra low cost segment may not sound a viable option to the repeat buyers, but it works well on the targeted segment," Karan Thakkar, senior market analyst at IDC India said.

According to IDC India Forecast, the smartphone market is expected to double between now and 2018.

"Smartphone market is expected to more than double between now and 2018 and much of this is expected to be driven by the migration from feature phones to smartphones. The user expectations are simple - best-in-class user experience at affordable prices. With the introduction of Mozilla and Android One, the sub $200 segment is anticipated to become even more appealing," said Kiran Kumar research manager, client devices, IDC India.