Chinese smartphone brands capture two-third of Indian market

Coupled with innovation and multi-pronged expansion strategy, Chinese smartphone makers continue to dominate the India smartphone market.

The market share of Chinese brands has reached a record 66% during the first quarter of this year, according to the latest Counterpoint’s Market Monitor research.

Driven by new product launches, Chinese phone maker Xiaomi remained on the top of the smartphone market share table with a 29% share, witnessing a decline of 2% in comparison to the same period last year. The Chinese brands grew 20% year-on-year (YoY) riding mainly on the growth of smartphones brands such as Vivo, Realme and OPPO. Vivo's volume grew 119% whereas OPPO witnessed a growth of 28% YoY.

Though India’s overall smartphone shipments grew 4% YoY, the report added.

Talking about the reasons for the growth of Chinese brands, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director of Counterpoint said that data consumption is on the rise and users are upgrading their phones faster as compared to other regions. This has led to users spending more on their purchase which is driving up the overall average selling price (ASP) in the market.

He expects these trends to continue in the future in the mid-tier segment.

Xiaomi Redmi 6A remained the top model followed by Xiaomi Note 6 Pro, Redmi Y2, Samsung Galaxy M20, and Galaxy A50. Chinese brand aggressive offline expansion and a strong focus on product build helped to retain its top position in the Indian smartphone market.

Earlier in February,  Xiaomi India Managing Director Manu Kumar Jain claimed that the Chinese smartphone maker is 54 per cent bigger than the second brand.

However, Xiaomi faced fierce competition from non-Chinese brand Samsung, which had about 23% market share. In the premium segment, Samsung surpassed OnePlus to become the number one player driven by the good response for its newly introduced Galaxy S10 series.

In the feature phone segment, Jio remained the leader, followed by Samsung, with about 30% market share.

Lack of innovation and slow growth on part of Indian brands in the smartphone segment led to their lowest ever share.