Shipments of 4G smartphones overtake 3G devices in Oct: IDC

About 9.3 million smartphones were shipped in India in October with 4G-based devices accounting for more than half of the share, research firm IDC today said.

Over 10 million smartphones were shipped in September, IDC said in a statement. "This decline could be attributed to incremental supplies witnessed during last weeks of September as the channels prepared for October's festive demand and online mega sales from major ecommerce players," it added.

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Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst (Client Devices) at IDC India said owing to attractive discounts and offers during e-commerce sales, online shipments of smartphones grew 12.1 per cent in October over the previous month. "This boosted the online share further from 33.5 per cent in September 2015 to 41.2 per cent in October 2015, primarily driven by Samsung and Lenovo," he added.

According to Kiran Kumar, Research Manager (Client Devices) at IDC India said 4G-based smartphones grew 25.9 per cent month-on-month in October. "4G-based smartphones accounted for more than half of smartphones shipped in October.

This gain is mainly at the expense of 3G-enabled handsets as vendors are replacing their existing models with 4G-based smartphones while making consumers future proof," Kumar said. IDC anticipates November to have maintained a similar shipment run-rate.