Samsung dethrones JioPhone as top selling feature phone in Sept quarter

Reliance JioPhone, which had emerged as the market leader in the feature phone category, has now lost its top position to Samsung during the July-September quarter of 2019.

According to a Counterpoint Research report, Samsung is now the new king in the feature phone segment with 22% market share.

Intel has emerged as the number two feature phone brand in Q3 with 16% market share followed by Nokia (12%), and Karbonn (7%).

Jio which has sold above 70 million units since its launch, has witnessed 4% fall in sales. On a year on year basis, JioPhone's feature phone sales volume declined to about 37%  in Q3 2019.

Previously, Reliance JioPhone was leading feature phone brand in India in the first quarter of 2019.

Importantly, the reason for this decline is that the operator was more focused on clearing the older JioPhone inventory ahead of Diwali season. As a result, the players such as itel, Lava and Karbonn registered positive annual growth despite the overall segment declined, stated the report.

Commenting upon the market dynamics, Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research said that the India smartphone market grew double digits reaching a record 49 million units in Q3 2019 offsetting the ongoing economic slowdown in other sectors.

While the smartphone market registered double-digit growth year-on-year, the feature phone market witnessed a steep decline of approximate 37%.

Two months ago, Reliance Jio had also launched broadband services with monthly packages starting from Rs 700.

On the other hand, Indian smartphone market is flourishing even at the time of economic slowdown.  India has been able to ship 49 million units of smartphone in Q3 2019, growing 10% year-on-year.

Xiaomi and Samsung topped the smartphone shipment list with 26% and 20% market share respectively, added report.