Xiaomi Becomes India's Biggest Smartphone Vendor, Surpasses Samsung: Counterpoint

In 2018, the phone shipment figure in the Indian market was 330 million units shipped, and 44 percent of them were smartphones. The Chinese phone maker Xiaomi is in the leading position in the mobile industry in India with 28 percent market share which is 4 percent higher than the world’s biggest phone vendor Samsung.

That is a significant increase in mobile segment’s market share since 2017 while Xiaomi’s biggest contenders Vivo, Oppo, and Samsung were still stuck in place.

Xiaomi reached the highest record ever in the Indian market and expanded its presence in offline markets. That said, smartphone shipments from online channels occupied 36 percent of total volume thanks to Amazon and Flipkart.

India is currently the world’s second-biggest smartphone market with over 430 million users. However, that is not even near half of the potential market so there is still plenty of room for phone makers to grab.

Besides smartphones, feature phone market has also been growing as well. It even has a faster growth rate compared to the smartphone market.

Jio is currently in the top position with 38 percent of feature phone market share while Samsung has been on a significant slump. Jio is also the leader in the overall market, including smartphones and feature phones while HMD Global with Nokia brand saw a slight growth.

These pieces of data are provided by Counterpoint Research, which claims that the market of both feature phones and smartphones are still very potential for phone makers. Realme, a new player which just joined the game in India in Q2 last year, managed to climb to the top 5 in just three quarters since it started operating, even knocking out its parent company Oppo. The phone maker reached the 4-million-user mark at the fastest pace.

But Realme is not the only phone vendors that have been seeing a significant growth rate as Tecno was the fastest growing phone brand (proportionally) with a growth rate of 221 percent in last year thanks to its expanded presence in the offline market. It is followed by Huawei’s sub-brand, Honor, with 183 percent growth rate, Infinix with 146 percent growth rate, and HMD with 138 percent growth rate.

OnePlus with 58 percent year on year growth rate is the fastest growing high-end phone brand in India. In general, the Indian market is shifting towards more high-end phones with the Rs. 20,000 - Rs. 30,000 saw the fastest growing rate while it was Rs. 10,000 - Rs. 15,000 that saw the biggest growth in 2017.