Indian Smartphone Market - A Promising Start

India smartphone market witnessed its strongest ever first quarter shipments but import duty hikes on key components remain a key pain point for domestic manufacturers

According to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the India smartphone market saw a shipment of 30.0 million units in Q1 2018, making it the strongest start to a year and maintaining a healthy year on year growth of 11 percent. However, the market remained almost flat compared to the previous quarter 2017Q4.

Xiaomi maintained its lead in the market for second quarter in a row with further expansion in the offline channel and popularity of its models such as Redmi 5A and Redmi note 5.

Various other companies, on the other hand, used the online channel to expand their share in the market, notable amongst those being Honor, iVOOMi and Tenor (10. or). This led to share growth of the online channel within smartphone market from to 34.2 percent in Q4 2017 to 36.0 percent in Q1 2018.

Xiaomi increased its share of total eTailer shipments from 32% a year ago to 53% in Q1 2018. “Xiaomi is in a unique position with a diversified channel approach and strong demand in each of the channels. Huawei’s Honor 9 Lite also made into the top 5 online models in its debut quarter Q1 2018,” says jaipal Singh, Senior Market Analyst, IDC India.

On the offline front, Transmission continued to drive growth through its brands itel and Tecno by expanding aggressively to smaller towns & cities by focusing on channel management and after sales service