New Delhi: The launch of Reliance Jio‘s 4G LTE service, expected to disrupt the 4G space in the country, is still on line. In the meantime though, Mukesh Ambani-owned Reliance Jio is making waves in the smartphone space and has climbed up the list of smartphone vendors in the country.
Reliance Jio has replaced Lava as the fifth largest smartphone vendor with huge shipments of 4G devices in the first quarter of 2016, according to a report by IDC. Also, Indian vendors Micromax, Intex and Lava together have dropped 20.4 per cent shares in the smartphone market, which itself saw a decline of 8.2 per cent.
Karthik J, senior market analyst, client devices, in a statement to ET said that the first quarter of the year is usually expected to be slow after the festive season in the last quarter of the year. He added that Micromax, Intex and Lava struggled to push their inventories into the market, which further led to decline in their shipments.
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On the other hand Samsung maintained its market leadership with 26.6 per cent in the smartphone market. Micromax retained the second position with 6.9 per cent growth over the same period last year. Intex is in the third position, although shipments sequentially declined by 10 per cent in Q1 2016 but grew over last year. Lenovo, which now includes Motorola, slipped to fourth position as the shipments declined 35.8 per cent.
Karthik said that LeEco made its entry in Indian smartphone market in Q1 2016 with its Le1S contributing to the vendor's shipments. Also Chinese vendors like Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and Coolpad gained a grip in the first quarter of the year with new product launches, marketing and expanding their channel presence.
