India Surpasses US As Second Largest Smartphone Market In 2019: Report

For the first time, India surpassed US to become the second largest smartphone market on an annual level in 2019. A report by Counterpoint Research reveals that India followed China globally, reaching 158 million shipments. Thanks to the influx of Chinese smartphone brands, India recorded a seven percent year-over-year growth.

Top Smartphone Players

A lot of Chinese companies have dominated the Indian smartphone scenario. Brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo have a good share in the market. The report reveals that Xiaomi continued to be the top brand with 28 percent of the market share. It is followed by Samsung, which earned 21 percent of the market share.

Lastly, Vivo secured the third place at 16 percent market share, said Counterpoint's 'Market Monitor' service. In comparison, the Chinese brands recorded 72 percent for the year 2019, where it was 60 percent share in 2018. It was also seen that Chinese players have expanded their footprint in both offline and online channels.

This includes brands like Realme, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Vivo. Over the past four years, Xiaomi, Vivo, and OnePlus have grown 15 times, 24 times and 18 percent, respectively, the report analyses. However, Samsung shipments remained almost flat (YoY) while it has shown a five percent (YoY) decline in 2019.

Smartphone Growth In India

However, the rate of growth for the smartphone market hit a single digit for the first time on an annual basis. Yet, "India is underpenetrated relative to many other markets with 4G penetration in terms of subscribers being around 55 percent," said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director, Counterpoint.

Take for instance Samsung. The report notes that "this is for the first time Samsung transitioned to a completely new portfolio targeting different channels (offline with A series and online with M series). However, it needs to double down its efforts to keep the momentum going."

At the same time, players like Itel, Lava, Nokia, and Micromax have registered positive annual growth despite the overall segment declined to show the untapped potential of the market. In fact, Itel came out as the number one feature phone brand in Q4 2019, followed by Samsung and Lava, the report says.