Lenovo-Motorola became the new No 2 smartphone player, pipping Micromax, and Xiaomi made its debut among the top five in the Indian market which clocked 32.3 million units in the quarter ended September, a first for the industry.
India’s smartphone market grew 17.5 per cent on-quarter and 11 per cent on-year in the July-September period, however, given the dismal first half of the year, analysts at IDC expect annual growth to be in the higher single digits in 2016.
Chinese vendors not only increased pressure on incumbents but also increased their online shipments, leading to an on-quarter 35 per cent swell in the online segment, which now comprises over 31 per cent of the market. Lenovo and Xiaomi, in that order, lead the online segment as of September.
Samsung is No 1 in smartphone segment with 23 per cent share, up by 8 per cent on-quarter and 9.7 per cent on-year, despite its troubles due to the Galaxy Note 7 which was to be launched in September. Multiple new launches across both offline and online channels added onto the its strong portfolio, while J2 in the affordable segment also propelled share.
Lenovo-Motorola has 9.6 per cent share of smartphone market, due to 46 per cent sequential growth due to Motorola’s E3 Power and Moto G4 devices. Shipments of these models doubled on-quarter and that of Lenovo’s K5 series were up by 40 per cent.
In overall phone market, Samsung continued to lead, followed by Lava, Intex, Micromax and Karbonn in that order. About 72.3 million units were shipped in the third quarter, up 18.1 per cent on-quarter.
Feature phone shipments rose 18.6% on-quarter to 39.9 million units, but feature phones market declined 12.4 per cent over the same period last year, pulling down overall mobile phone shipments by 3.3 per cent.
By Baishakhi Dutta
