Zee Media Bureau
New Delhi: There is no denying Samsung is the leading handset maker in the world despite heavy competition from Apple, HTC, Nokia, to name a few. The South Korean giant is also the leader in India but home-grown handset maker Micromax Mobiles is catching up real fast.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), given the current growth rates of smartphones in the Indian smartphone market, there is likely to be a change of leadership in the remaining quarters of the year.
"Given the current growth rates, there is a real possibility of seeing vendor positions change in the remaining quarters this year," said Jaideep Mehta, VP and GM - South Asia, IDC.
He also noted that Samsung is the leader in the market, Micromax was growing faster and that Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively inorder to continue to stay ahead.
Accoding to the IDC, Samsung clocked 29 percent of marketshare while Micromax has 18 percent marketshare in the second quarter (April-June) 2014.
Karbonn, Lava and Motorola (thanks to Moto G, E and X) completed the remaining top five.
According to IDC, the overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in the second quarter in 2014, which is a 5 percent quarter-on-quarter growth against first quarter (January-March) 2014. It attributed the growth to both the product categories - smartphones and feature phones.
The report said smartphone market in India has maintained its growth impetus with smartphone shipments touching year-on-year growth of 84 percent in the second quarter and a quarterly growth of 11 percent. The potential for growth in the smartphone market is quite high as 71 percent of the market continues to be on feature phones.
"IDC observes that a new entry level price point is being breached by the Indian home grown vendors 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," Karan Thakkar, senior market analyst at IDC India said.
According to IDC India Forecast, the smartphone market is expected to double between now and 2018.
"Smartphone market is expected to more than double between now and 2018 and much of this is expected to be driven by the migration from feature phones to smartphones. The user expectations are simple - best-in-class user experience at affordable prices. With the introduction of Mozilla and Android One, the sub USD 200 segment is anticipated to become even more appealing," said Kiran Kumar research manager, client devices, IDC India.
With Agency Inputs
