The smartphone market in India crossed the 30 million units shipment milestone for the first time in the third quarter, maintaining its healthy traction with 11 per cent year-on-year (YoY) growth.
According to the International Data Corporation's (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, smartphone shipments clocked 32.3 million units in the third quarter, recording 17.5 percentage growth over the previous quarter.
“This seasonal spike in the third quarter of the year can be attributed to channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to the Chinese holidays in October," Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India, said.
And, inspite of instances of fire and battery bursts in some of its flagship models, Samsung led the Indian smartphone market with a 23 per cent share. It reported 8 per cent sequential growth and 9.7 per cent growth from the same period last year.
Despite the recall of Samsung’s flagship Note 7, multiple new launches across both offline and online channels added to its strong portfolio and helped the vendor grow at a healthy rate in the third quarter, IDC said, adding that the J2 continues to be a key contributor for Samsung.
Lenovo Group (including Motorola) climbed to second place with 9.6 per cent share of smartphones.
Motorola’s volume almost doubled quarter-on-quarter driven by the newly launched E3 Power and G4 models.
The K5 series continues to be a lead runner for Lenovo, accounting for over 40 per cent of its total volume.
However, Micromax slipped to third position with a 32 per cent decline in smartphone shipments over the previous quarter. The vendor is facing pressure from other local vendors in the sub-$100 segment and with Chinese players in the $100-$150 bracket, the IDC report said.
Xiaomi made its debut in the top five as its shipments have doubled over the previous quarter, it said.
Reliance Jio sustained its fifth position in the third quarter despite a healthy 21 per cent growth over that in the previous quarter.
With the commercial launch of Reliance Jio services with an attractive introductory offer, LYF branded smartphones saw sharp demand with reports of stock-outs at some locations. Apart from its entry-level Flame series, the Water series also contributed to growth in the third quarter, it said.
Overall, mobile phone market shipments closed at 72.3 million units in the quarter, recording 18 per cent sequential growth.
Feature phones registered 39.9 million units during the quarter, with a healthy 18.6 per cent quarter-over-quarter growth.
However, the feature phones market declined at 12.4 per cent over the same period last year, pulling down marginally the overall mobile phone shipments by 3.3 per cent.
“The mobile vendor ecosystem is going through a multi-dimensional transition. Continuous investment from China-based vendors on retail expansion and high decibel marketing has led to disruption in the plans of home-grown vendors to some extent," Jaipal Singh, Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India, said.
To remain relevant, home-grown vendors are counting on the feature phone market even though they are facing certain supply issues for a few components," he said.
"Also, vendors are re-looking the channel strategy by getting lower tier distributors on-board, positioning more staff at store-fronts and adopting the right mix of products in both the online and offline channels," he added.
The migration from feature phone to smartphones has slowed down, helping India-based vendors to maintain their dominance in the overall mobile market.
Going forward, IDC said it expects the market to end with higher single digit annual growth, considering the smartphone performance till the third quarter.