After a sluggish first quarter, smartphone shipment in India grew 44 per cent to 26.5 million units in the June quarter as vendors took to online retail to push sales, research firm IDC on Tuesday said.
Also, the market is expected to continue to grow in double-digits over the next few years as people switch to smartphones and gradually upgrade to 4G-enabled phones.
“By 2017, we expect India to overtake USA to be the second largest smartphone market globally,’ it said in a statement.
About 26.5 million smartphones were shipped to India in the second quarter of 2015, up 44 per cent from 18.4 million units for the same period last year, IDC said. “This strong second quarter performance saw smartphone shipments grow by 19 per cent, following a sluggish first quarter this year,” IDC added. It, however, has not released shipments numbers for the January-March 2015 quarter. Samsung maintained its leadership in the Indian smartphone market with 23 per cent share, followed by Micromax (17 per cent), Intex (11 per cent), lava (7 per cent) and lenovo (6 per cent).
However, the overall Indian mobile phone market shrunk by 6 per cent in the said quarter on a year-on-year (YoY) basis. Vendors shipped 59.4 million units in June quarter compared with 63.2 million units shipped in the second quarter of 2014.