After dwindling down the ladder for two consecutive quarters, the country’s smartphone market has rejuvenated by registering 27.5 million unit shipments in the second quarter of 2016, according to a new report from the International Data Corporation (IDC).
The industry, the report states, lodged a 17.1% growth over the previous quarter, however, the market only saw a marginal growth of 3.7% growth over Q2 2015 and both global and Indian vendors’ shipments declined year-on-year.
China’s dominance as a manufacturing hub overshadowed India’s growth with the IDC reporting that the Chinese-based vendors’ shipments growing to 28% over the previous quarter of which Lenovo group, Vivo, Xiaomi, OPPO, and Gionee are the key contributors.
As per the vendors in India, Samsung is still leading the industry, with the budget segment phone maker, Micromax following it.
Samsung’s market share stood at 25.1%, registering 10.9% sequential growth over the previous quarter and 15% growth from the same period last year.
“With updated versions of J2, J5 and J7 released in Q2 2016, J-series devices continue to drive Samsung’s shipments,” IDC said.
Micromax came in second with 12.9% share. “Slew of new launches backed by the new marketing initiatives helped Micromax gain the market share post two consecutive declines in Q2 2016. Vendor has re-gained share in $150-$200 segment with launch of Canvas 6 series and Yu Yunicorn.”
Lenovo, Intex, and Reliance Jio clinched the next three positions with 7.7%, 7.1%, and 6.8% share, respectively.
Interestingly, feature phone users have continued to grow, accounting for more than half of the total Indian mobile phone market.
According to Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, Mobile Devices Research, IDC India and South Asia, “The rate of migration from feature to smartphone has slowed down. 33.7 million units of feature phones were shipped in Q2 2016 with 2.6% growth over last year. Cautious spending behaviour of consumers clubbed with feature phone’s continued relevance to the target customer’s usage needs, vendors re-calibrating the channel to increase their share and relatively better margins with feature phones are some of the factors which are driving the volumes for feature phones.”
