India’s largest home-grown smartphone company, Micromax, has been the second-largest smartphone vendor in the country after Samsung by volume for the past few years. However, even though the company is selling boatloads of smartphones, a new report from IDC now says that, as of Q2 2016, the combined sales of Lenovo and its subsidiary, Moto, has actually overtaken the total sales of Micromax by value. While the Chinese tech company currently has a 7.7% share of the Indian smartphone market by volume, IDC says that the firm actually has 9.074% of the market in terms of value. That is just a shade over the 9.070% currently held by the Cupertino, California-based Apple Inc., who has now slipped down to number three after Samsung and Lenovo.
This is quite a significant development, as both Lenovo and Moto, unlike Micromax, sell their phones exclusively online via e-commerce portals such as Flipkart and Amazon. Micromax smartphones, meanwhile, are available at thousands of brick-and-mortar retail outlets across the country, making them more accessible to large sections of the Indian society. Although both Micromax and Samsung have come under increasing pressure from Chinese companies like Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo and LeEco in recent times, both have managed to hold onto their positions on top of the Indian smartphone market, which is now the third-largest in the world by volume after China and the U.S.
Meanwhile, as per IDC’s ‘Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker’ released back in August, Lenovo is currently the third-largest smartphone vendor in India by volume, with a 7.7% share of the market. Samsung and Micromax are comfortably in front with 25.1% and 12.9% of the market respectively, according to the report. While Intex slipped down to number five during the quarter, Reliance’s newly-launched ‘Lyf’-branded smartphones came in at number four with a 7.1% market-share thanks to the free unlimited LTE data that is being bundled with them. Commenting on IDC’s latest report, the Director of Smartphones for Lenovo India, Mr. Sudhin Mathur, released a press statement, saying, “This is a huge milestone achieved by us, which has motivated and encouraged us further to go against all odds by creating meaningful and innovative, technologically-advanced products that enhance the consumer mobile experience”.
Meanwhile, Lenovo has been devoting a lot more time to the Indian market over the past couple of years, as it faces tough competition from newcomers like OPPO and Vivo back in its homeland. The company recently unveiled a number of new smartphones at their IFA 2016 event in Berlin, most of which are expected to make their way to India at some stage over the next few months.