Xiaomi, Samsung, and Realme grab 57% smartphone shipments during the festive season

According to the latest research from Counterpoint's Market Pulse service, three smartphone players - Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme - captured 57 percent of the Indian festive sales volumes as smartphone sales in the Diwali season grew 26 percent year-on-year (YoY) compared to the same period last year.

Counterpoint said that this was mainly driven by the leading two e-commerce platforms - Flipkart and Amazon's series of online sale events like "Flipkart Big Billion Day" and "Amazon Great Indian Festival". and OEM promotions (Mi.com) which offered huge discounts, No-cost EMI on debit and credit card on top smartphones and other attractive offers.

Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst stated, "The overall India festive season smartphone sales registered highest ever growth of 26 percent YoY in 2018. However, the online sale events which continued for weeks running up to Diwali helped these online platforms register a massive 46 percent YoY growth in sales volumes and contributed to half of the overall sales."

He said, "This was mainly due to a greater number of attractive exclusive smartphones as compared to the last year on these platforms, backed up with offers and lucrative deals. Flipkart stood out due to the most number of exclusives while Amazon benefitted some from the launch of OnePlus 6T."

The report also pointed out that Realme registered a record performance for any new brand ever in India, becoming the second largest brand across the eCommerce channels.

Commenting on the brands which registered most of the growth and remained popular, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director said, "The top three smartphone brands, Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme captured 57 percent of the overall Diwali festive season smartphone sales. Xiaomi sold the most number of smartphones during this period thanks to strong performance in online channels. Xiaomi widened the gap with Samsung which still did relatively well in offline channels capturing 30 percent share."
"The newly launched online-only smartphone brand, Realme had a record festive performance for any new brand ever in India. Realme immediately captured 9 percent share jumping to the third spot in overall sales volume performance and also became the second largest in the online segment with 18 percent share. Huawei also had a strong performance in the online segment while vivo performed exceedingly well in offline channels," Pathak added.

Hanish Bhatia from Counterpoint also shared his insights, "Emerging brands such as OnePlus, Pocophone, Asus and HMD Nokia also registered strong uptake during the festive season due to the new launches ahead of the festive sale period. Meanwhile, Apple's new iPhones had a relatively lukewarm response for its new and older iPhone models compared to the rest of the brands."