India smartphone shipment grows 4 pc to 31 mn in March quarter: Counterpoint

Smartphone shipment in the country grew four per cent year-on-year to 31 million units in the January-March 2019 quarter, according to a report by Counterpoint Research.

Anshika Jain, research analyst at Counterpoint Research, said the overall growth was slower than expected as some of the major brands were sitting on inventory after a stock build-up during the festive period last quarter.

"This quarter, we have seen all major brands expanding their footprint in offline channels to gain market share," Jain added.

While the report did not disclose the shipment numbers for feature phones, it said Jio had a 30 per cent share, followed by Samsung (15 per cent), Lava (13 per cent), Nokia (8 per cent) and itel (7 per cent).

"While the smartphone market offers a big opportunity, one can't ignore 400 million feature phone users in the market which is also likely to stay for the next five years in India," the report added.

Xiaomi continued to lead the smartphone tally with 29 per cent share, followed by Samsung (23 per cent), Vivo (12 per cent), Realme and Oppo (7 per cent each).

Volume of the Chinese brands is estimated to have grown 20 per cent y-o-y driven by growth of brands like Vivo, Realme, and OPPO.

The market share of Chinese brands in the Indian smartphone market reached a record 66 per cent during the first quarter of 2019.

"India's smartphone market continues to attract a lot of attention from global and Chinese players. Data consumption is on the rise and users are upgrading their phones faster as compared to other regions," Counterpoint Research Associate Director Tarun Pathak said.

This has led to users spending more on their purchase which is driving up the overall average selling price in the market, he added.

"As a result of this, the premium specifications are now diffusing faster into the mid-tier price brands. We estimate this trend to continue leading to a competitive mid-tier segment in coming quarters," Pathak said.

Samsung surpassed OnePlus to become the number one player in the premium smartphone segment, driven by the good response for its Galaxy S10 series.