With a mobile phone market growth of 24% in Q1, India has some very surprising report from IDC. A total of 60.7 million phones were shipped in India compared to a 48.8 million in Q1 of 2012. Android leads with 90% of the 6.1 million smartphone shipments with numerous no-brands taking a huge segment of the low prices Android smartphone purchases.
India’s Micromax and Karbonn did exeptionally well in the market with second and third spot beating the global giant Nokia which stood at 5.9% marketshare. Micromax was at 18.8% while Kabonn at 10.9% marketshare. Other no-brands were completely high up at 25.7% and if this was grouped up as one brand could be second.
Samsung maintained the lead with a whopping 32.7% of the 6.1 million total smartphone sales in India, a 14% Quarter-on-Quarter growth.. Samsung rose to the top spot in the Indian mobile phone market and the rise can largely be attributed to its gains in the smartphone market over the past two years.
The numerous Galaxy versions that Samsung released to fit every market segment spanning price points, processor speeds and other specifications seemed to attribute to Samsung hige growth, that and the well cultivated brand over time. Samsung also offered the zero interest EMIs (Equal monthly instalments) and cashback schemes that saw a spike in high end smartphone sales.
“The competition between top international and local vendors remained prominent in the last quarter with Samsung, Micromax and Karbonn controlling almost two-thirds of the Indian Smartphone market, however the market remained driven by low cost devices.” said Manasi Yadav, Senior Market Analyst with IDC’s Client Devices team.
“Indian market is driven by low cost devices. They have also grown much faster when it comes to units,” said Yadav.
Nokia which saw a decline in Symbian phone shipments sales is yet to create a sizeable come-back at position four. Things are expected to take a turn for better with the increased interest in Windows phone 8 based Nokia Lumia 510 and Lumia 920 doing well in the last quarter. Nokia is also yet to release the Asha 510 which is expected to hold strongly at the lower price point devices.
Sony which held 5th position of the smartphone marketshare at 5.9% has these figures atributed to their mid-tier devices, the Xperia Tipo, Xperia E Dual and Xperia Z at the high end.
