The smartphone market in India grew by 12 percentage points in Q1 2017, a recent analysis conducted by industry research firm Canalys suggests. While the number of handset shipments in the South Asian country increased over the course of the three-month period ending March 31, the actual share structure of the majority of the market didn’t change in a significant manner, the Thursday report states. Samsung is still the overall leader in the Indian smartphone that recorded more than 27 million unit shipments in Q1 2017, with the Seoul-based consumer electronics manufacturer accounting for over six million — or 22 percent — of those shipments. The South Korean tech giant is currently followed by Xiaomi whose handsets accounted for 14 percent of all quarterly shipments in India, marking a year-over-year increase of three percentage points.
Vivo is still the third-largest smartphone maker in India, Canalys discovered, stating that the Guangdong, China-based company increased its shipments in India by 36 percent compared to Q4 2016, accounting for every tenth smartphone shipped in the country over the course of the first quarter of the year. Vivo was followed by Lenovo that shipped three million handsets in the same period, switching places with OPPO compared to the previous quarter, Canalys said, without giving a shipment estimate for the Dongguan, China-based original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Samsung reportedly managed to maintain its market lead due to the demand for its Galaxy J series, the research suggests, adding that most of those devices ended up being sold by the company’s massive physical distribution network that includes numerous local partners. While the largest smartphone maker in the world is still leading the market in India, its high-end models have recently been underperforming in the country, which is something that the company is now hoping to change with the newly released Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus, as revealed by one of its officials earlier this month.
All major OEMs in the world are currently putting an increased focus on India due to the fact that the South Asian country is one of the last massive smartphone markets on the planet that isn’t showing serious signs of saturation. Some recent estimates suggest that Indian consumers will purchase up to 130 million new devices over the course of this year, which is a market that most phone manufacturers deem worthy of fighting for.