Samsung continued to dominate India’s high-end smartphone space with a 32.1 per ecnt market share in the 4G phones category, followed by China’s Lenovo (14.6 per cent) and Lyf (10.7 per ecnt) in the third quarter of calendar 2016, although the country is far from becoming a “smartphones only” market anytime soon with feature phones still accounting for 59 per cent of the overall mobile phone turf.
Cyber Media Research (CMR) expects handset shipments to clock 265 million by the end of calendar 2016, of which 116 million would be smartphones.
Samsung, it said, also dominated the super-premium smartphones space, notching up a 49.2 per cent market share followed by Apple at second spot (43.3 per cent) and Sony Mobile, a distant third, with a 5.3 per cent market share.
India shipped 197.5 million mobile handsets by the end of September 2016, of which 78.4 million were shipped alone in the third quarter of calendar 2016, said CMR in its third-quarter handset markets review.
Korea’s Samsung also topped the overall mobile handsets category in the third quarter, with a 24.6 per cent market share, followed Lenovo (10.4 per cent) and Micromax (7.5 per cent).
Smartphone makers’ efforts to keep devices affordable has paid off well but cannot promise continuous sustainable growth, said Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst (telecoms) at CMR.
By Shruti
