A day after a CyberMedia Research confirmed Xiaomi’s ascension to the throne of Indian smartphone market, IDC report has confirmed the same. As per the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, which was released on Tuesday, Xiaomi is the leading smartphone seller in India while Reliance Jio dominates the feature phone segment.
“Xiaomi taking a lead over Samsung in the smartphone market and Reliance Jio emerging as the leading feature phone company in India were the two key highlights of the last quarter of 2017,” said Upasana Joshi, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India. Joshi adds further: “The growth of both the vendors was propelled by their aggressive pricing. Xiaomi’s offline expansion and higher marketing spends were other key factors for the vendor’s high shipments in the seasonally low quarter.”
According to the IDC report, Samsung had 24.2 per cent market share in Q4 2017 against 26.8 per cent of Xiaomi. Reliance Industries had 24.1 per cent share in feature phone segment against Samsung’s 14.5%. However, for the whole year, Samsung dominated the Indian smartphone market with overall 24.7% share while Xiaomi has 20.9% market share.
Xiaomi tripled its shipments year-over-year and sold more than 2 million units from its offline channel, IDC said.
Meanwhile, Vivo jumped to 3rd position pushing Lenovo to 4th.
As per the research, the Indian smartphone market witnessed a healthy 14 percent annual growth with a total shipment of 124 million units in 2017, making it the fastest growing market amongst the top 20 smartphone markets globally. The market resumed its double-digit growth after a temporary slowdown in 2016 caused by factors such as demonetization and a shortage of smartphone components. This contrasts with China, the world’s largest smartphone market that saw its first decline this year, while the USA was relatively flat.
Strangely enough, looing at the trends, a big challenge to growth in India might come from the resurgence of feature phones now powered by Jio.
It said that China-based vendors strengthened their positions in the smartphone category with the collective share of China-based vendors reaching 53 percent in 2017 from 34 percent a year ago.
In 2017Q4, vendors shipped a total of 56 million units in the 2017Q4 making it the highest-ever shipments in a single quarter.