India’s smartphone market is currently a key battleground for several smartphone makers from China, Taiwan, and South Korea. As per IDC Q3 report, Xiaomi tops the Indian smartphone market with 27.3 percent share in the third quarter this year. The company shipped 11.7 million units in this quarter and leads the first position. Company’s Redmi 5A and Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 Pro continued to be the most selling smartphones in India. To recall, earlier this week Xiaomi hiked the prices of some of their products including budget smartphones Redmi 6 and Redmi 6A.
South Korean giant, Samsung took No 2 in the smartphone segment with a 22.6% share. Samsung registered an annual growth of 4.8 percent in 3Q18 at the back of its ‘Infinity’ series model ‘Galaxy J6‘ followed by Galaxy J2 (2018), J8, J4 and the recently launched Android Go Model Galaxy J2 core with a middling demand, as per the IDC report.
Vivo shipped 4.5 million units and took the 3rd position with a 10.5 percent share whereas the Micromax sold 2.9 million units with a 6.9 percent share and took the 4th position. While the Oppo managed to get the 5th position, sold 2.9 million units with a 6.7 percent share.
With a 2.1 percent (YoY) growth, the feature phone market registered shipments of 43.1 million units in the 3Q 2018. Shipments for Jio Phone continued to decline as the vendor focused on clearing existing channel inventory, the report added.
Coming to the premium end of the market (above Rs 30,000), another popular Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus leads the premium smartphone segment with the OnePlus 6, surpassing Samsung and Apple in the third quarter. OnePlus captured 37 percent of the total market share in the segment, followed by Apple at 30 percent and Samsung with 26 percent.
Earlier this week, the company announced the OnePlus 6T Thunder Purple edition and it will be available on Amazon India, OnePlus online store, OnePlus exclusive offline stores, Reliance Digital and Croma outlets from November 16. Talking about the price, the company has priced at Rs 41,999. Meanwhile, the specs packed inside the OnePlus 6T Thunder Purple is also the same as the other variants.
According to the report, the Indian smartphone market reached an all-time high of 42.6 million unit shipments in Q3 2018, endorsing a growth of 9.1 percent year-on-year (YoY). The rise has been attributed to price cuts of the smartphone during festive season sales on e-tailers and offers like zero or low-cost EMIs, buyback guarantees, cashback on debit/credit cards.
