Competition in the Indian smartphone market has never been greater. Even as local brands such as Micromax and Xolo are gaining popularity, new entrants such as Motorola, Asus and Xiaomi have also created quite a buzz. But does that mean Samsung's dominance in the Indian market is nearing its end? Well, some of the recent market studies have suggested the inevitable. And now, a new report by research firm IDC reveals Samsung maintains the top position in the Indian smartphone market but is closely followed by the local brand Micromax.
According to IDC, Samsung held the top position with 17% market share in June quarter of 2014, closely followed by Micromax with 14% and Nokia 10%. "While Samsung has held on to its leadership position in the market, it is noteworthy that Micromax is growing faster. Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively, and also needs a blockbuster product at the high end to regain momentum," says IDC vice president and general manager South Asia Jaideep.
IDC in its report points out that Micromax had dethroned Nokia to grab the second position and ensured a wide gap between the second and third positions. The research firm also highlighted the local vendors are breaching a new entry-level price point almost every quarter.
"These devices are not equipped with high end specifications and RAM is typically 256 MB. This ultra low cost segment may not sound a viable option to the repeat buyers, but it works well on the targeted segment," says IDC India Senior Market Analyst Karan Thakkar said.
Image courtesy: Business Standard
The research firm further says the smartphone market in India is currently far from hitting saturation as almost 71% of the market is on the feature phones. With festival season ahead , demand for smartphones is most likely to grow.
"The overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in Q2 2014 ie a 5% quarter on quarter growth against Q1 2014. Back to back volume growth in the smartphone market are being noted due to the re-defined low price models in smartphones and continuous migration from feature phones to smartphones," IDC said.
As said above, recent market studies have claimed Samsung is losing in India as well as in China. A report by Counterpoint Research claimed Micromax had gone past Samsung as the leading brand in the last quarter of 2014 with a market share of 16.6 percent (in terms of mobile phone shipments).
Interestingly, Samsung has rubbished these surveys, stating it stills leads in the Indian market and its market share has almost doubled. "In India, there might be 1-2% up or down. Samsung's market share has doubled over the second place, so what is the meaning of comparing or saying that the gap is narrowing?" recently said Samsung's India head BD Park.