Chinese firms push up India smartphone shipments to 17% in Q2

Smartphone market in India posted a 17.1 percent sequential rise in shipments to 27.5 million units in April-June quarter, with Chinese vendors like Lenovo, Xioami and Vivo driving the growth, research firm IDC said.

The shipments have revived after two successive quarters of decline. Handset makers had shipped 23.5 million units in the first quarter of this year.

Shipments were up marginally 3.7 percent from 26.5 million units in the second quarter of 2015, IDC said in a report today.

Samsung continued to lead with 25.1 percent market share followed by Micromax (12.9 percent), Lenovo Group (7.7 percent), Intex (7.1 percent) and Reliance Jio (6.8 percent).

About 33.7 million units of feature phones were shipped in the second quarter this year, up 2.6 percent 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," IDC said.

With the festive season approaching, IDC expects shipments of both smartphone and feature phone to sequentially grow in the third quarter.

Smartphone volumes declined for Indian and global vendors year-on-year, while Chinese players like Lenovo, Vivo and Xioami saw a 75 percent jump in their shipment in the second quarter of 2016.

"China-based vendors' shipments grew 28 percent over the previous quarter of which Lenovo group, Vivo, Xiaomi, OPPO and Gionee were key contributors driving the growth," IDC India Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) Karthik J said.

Until now, Lenovo was the only China-based vendor to ship over a million units in a quarter, while this quarter saw additional three vendors joining the million shipment bandwagon, he added.

"Sub-USD 150 segment (about Rs 10,000) has been a strong foothold for Indian vendors, which is now facing increased pressure from both global and China based vendors," IDC India Market Analyst Client Devices Jaipal Singh said.

Aggressive entry of Reliance Jio with shipments of over a half a million 4G devices has captured significant share in sub USD 50 segment at the expense of other Indian vendor's share, Singh added.

The premium segment (over Rs 20,000) saw Chinese vendors capturing around one-third market share in April-June quarter, up 9 percent from the year-ago period.