The Indian smartphone market has been escalated by 44% at the end of Q2 2015. The growth is fuelled by increased sales through online retailers such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. Smartphone sales have increased from 18.4 million to 26.5 million during the corresponding period, International Data Corporation (IDC) states.
Online retailers have fueled the growth, and it has opened new avenues for many vendors who would have been struggling to get a foothold in the difficult distribution network. The second quarter has seen a sharp spike in sales of smartphones from retailers for most of the key vendors.
As the Chinese market gets saturated, most vendors are turning their attention towards India where there is a huge scope of sales in smartphones. Chinese vendors have tripled their year-on-year shipments and doubled its quarter-on-quarter.
Last year for the same quarter, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., Lenovo Corp., Xiaomi Corp., and Gionee Communication Equipment Co. accounted for 6% of the sales which has doubled this year and become 12%.
Samsung Electronics continues to dominate in India with a 23% market share in smartphones. It is followed by Micromax Informatics Ltd. has pocketed 17% market share. Intex Technologies India Ltd. is a distant third with 11% market share. Lava International Ltd. (7%) and Lenovo Corp. (6%) are the other two players who complete the top five selling smartphone manufacturers in the country.
By 2014, the number of smartphones grew by 54% and touched a whopping 140 million. It is going to increase and touch 651 million by the end of 2019.
The growth was sluggish in the first quarter, and the smartphone market shrunk by 6% in the second quarter of 2015 on a year to year basis. Vendors had shipped 59.4 million units as compared to 63.2 million, the previous year.
However, smartphones shipment grew by 19% in the second quarter. Close to a billion people has mobile devices as per data provided by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).
