No Indian brands in top five vendor list in Q4

"Be Indian and buy Indian" you must have heard this slogan number of times but now this slogan has been changed by a new one i.e Be Indian and buy Chinese, as the smartphone brands like Xiaomi, Lenovo, Oppo and Vivo have successfully conquered homegrown brands from the list of top five vendors, according to latest report by International Research Corporation (IDC).

The smartphone shipments reached at 25.8 million units in the fourth quarter of 2016, similar volumes as that of 2015 but declining sharply by 20.3 per cent over the previous quarter, while the Indian mobile market registered 109.1 million units of smartphones shipments in 2016 with a marginal 5.2 per cent of annual growth in 2016.

However, IDC notes that this as a seasonal decline post the festival season combined with demonetization-impact for the low consumer sales in November and December.

"This is relatively lower than expected smartphone shipments for India owing to sluggish first half and demonetisation at the end of year" Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC said in a press statement.

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Meanwhile, the report says that Samsung is still leading the market with a share of 25.1 per cent but the company saw 13.1 per cent decline in the fourth quarter of 2016, while its annual shipments went up by 3.2 per cent in 2016, driven majorly by the J-series and the rest are all chinese brand like Xiaomi has 10.7 per cent market share against 3.3 per cent market share in the same period last year, third is Lenovo Group( including Motorola) which has 9.9 per cent market share, fourth and fifth is Oppo and Vivo with 8.6 per cent and 7.6 per cent shares respectively.

The report also says that in the smartphone market, the share of China-based vendors touched a whopping 46 per cent in the quarter ended December 2016, as their shipments doubled if compared with the same period last year, while the share of homegrown vendors further slipped to 19 per cent.

"This is first time when none of the homegrown vendors were able to make their position in top five," Jaipal Singh, Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India said in a press statement. "The decision of sticking with a 3G-heavy portfolio and prioritising the price game over product experience is working against the dominance of homegrown vendors," he added.

The report also mentioned that the bad times could last for a while as Chinese vendors are also entering into the feature phone market where Chinese brand Itel is already at number two.