New Delhi: A new research report by research firm IDC suggests that Samsung is still the leader in India but is closely followed by Micromax. An earlier report by Counterpoint Research had suggested that Samsung has slipped to number two spot in the overall mobile market in India and that Micromax had taken the lead.
According to IDC, Samsung with a marketshare of 17 per cnet is still leading the market, ahead of Micromax which has a 14 percent share, and Nokia which now has a 10 percent share. Karbon and Lava are at number four and five respectively and interestingly ‘others' occupy 42 percent of the market.
"Given the current growth rates, there is a real possibility of seeing vendor positions change in the remaining quarters this year," said Jaideep Mehta, VP and GM - South Asia, IDC.
The report said the overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in the second quarter in 2014, which is a 5 percent quarter-on-quarter growth against first quarter (January-March) 2014. The research firm attributed the growth to both the product categories - smartphones and feature phones.
The highlight of the report is the booming Indian smartphone market which witnessed year-on-year growth of 84 percent in the second quarter and a quarterly growth of 11 percent. The report added that the potential for growth in the smartphone market is quite high as 71 percent of the market continues to be on feature phones.
"IDC observes that a new entry level price point is being breached by the Indian home grown vendors every quarter. These devices are not equipped with high-end specifications and RAM is typically 256 MB. This ultra low cost segment may not sound a viable option to the repeat buyers, but it works well on the targeted segment," Karan Thakkar, senior market analyst at IDC India said.
IDC India Forecast predicts that the smartphone market will double between now and 2018.
"Smartphone market is expected to more than double between now and 2018 and much of this is expected to be driven by the migration from feature phones to smartphones. The user expectations are simple - best-in-class user experience at affordable prices. With the introduction of Mozilla and Android One, the sub $200 segment is anticipated to become even more appealing," said Kiran Kumar research manager, client devices, IDC India.
With the influx of Chinese vendors like Xiaomi, Oppo, Gionee and Mozilla's plans to enter the smartphone category at $50 level, the low end segment of the smartphone market will become crucial in the coming quarters.
“The shipment contribution of ‘phablets' (5.5 inch – 6.99 inch screen size smartphones) in Q2 of 2014 was 5.4 percent of the overall smartphone segment. The phablet category grew by 20 percent quarter-on-quarter in terms of sheer volume,” the report pointed out.
It will be interesting to see how Q3 and Q4 will pan out for the Indian feature and smartphone market given the recent buzz around the entry of various Chinese handset makers like Xiaomi and Oppo.
It will however be more interesting to see how Q3 and Q4 play out in the Indian mobile and smartphone market with the entry of players like Xiaomi, Oppo, in India. Xiaomi in particularly has managed to set off a new craze around itself. We'll have to wait and watch on how it reflects in the next couple of quarters.
