Chinese brands are now holding a record 66 percent of Indian smartphone market share in first quarter of 2019, according to a report, as brands like RealME, Vivo and Oppo gained popularity that caused the volume to increase by 20 percent with Xiaomi Corp leading those brands.
Although Xiaomi saw its shipments to India dropped by 2 percent over the last year but the Beijing-based company still managed to retain its leading position in the country’s smartphone market, with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd following its at second place, according to a report by Hong-Kong based research firm Counterpoint Research.
Vivo’s shipment volume to India surged by 119 percent in the first quarter while that of Oppo saw a rise of 28 percent.
Vivo’s smartphone portfolio of mid-tier range of between $100 and $180 remained expanding that backed the brand’s growth, also helped by company’s aggressive cricket campaign in Indian Premier League, said analysts at Counterpoint.
Indian smartphone market emerged as fastest growing market in the world, where affordable prices of smartphones with offering of features like larger display screens and selfie cameras have made the Chinese brands popular among the users.
Moreover, video streaming services like Netflix Inc and Hotstar have also drove the demand of these affordable Chinese brands with messaging apps such as Facebook Inc’s WhatsApp have further added to that local demand.
Counterpoint’s Tarun Pathak has highlighted that data consumption in the country is increasing and rate of users replacing their phone with upgraded models is much faster than any other region in the world.
As a result, the specs which were previously available in the premium handsets have now been increasingly made available by the companies into their mid-level models and we are seeing that trend to remain continued in coming quarters making the mid-tier segment of smartphone penetrating more aggressively in the market, Pathak said.