India is a lucrative market for almost all the brands including Apple because over here there is huge untapped smartphone market. As of now, around 75% mobile users in India still use a feature phone. As per a recent report by strategic AnalyticsXiaomi may be the front runner when it comes to choosing which is the most preferred smartphone brand for Indian Android owners looking to upgrade their devices in 2017.
The report’s finding suggests that Xiaomi, Samsung and Apple are the top three preferred brands for the next smartphone purchase among our Android users in India. The report further highlights that Micromax despite holding 9% share of devices couldn’t make it to even top 4.
Rajeev Nair, Senior Analyst at Strategic Analytics said ,“Xiaomi for the first time since it started operations in the Indian market was ranked among the top three vendors in Q4 2016. The vendor grew a whopping 125% YoY and 17% Q-o-Q and captured 10% of market share in India in the quarter.”
Interestingly, areas like network speed, Processor performance and availability were preferred more rather than mainstream areas like Camera, Megapixels, Screen Resolution etc. This apparently implies that users in India have become more tech savvy off late which is why smartphone manufacturers can’t go on false claiming anything on their device.
Further, the report also stated that majority of Indian consumers prefer buying a smartphone in the price range of Rs10,000 – Rs 20,000 and only six percent explore buying handsets above Rs 30,000.
The report also suggests the joy for Xiaomi may be short lived becauseof the expected entry of Nokia in the handset space. Thefindings of the report are based on a sample size of 2000 phone users.