The Indian market is a big gold mine, and Chinese smartphone manufacturers need to work hard to maintain their current market share. The latest report released by IDC is quite exciting. Data show that in the first quarter of 2019, India’s smartphone market shipments reached 32.1 million units, an increase of 7.1%. Among them, the shipment of Xiaomi reached 9.8 million, with a market share of 30.6%.
Also Read: Xiaomi Is The Top Smartphone Brand Online For Ten Consecutive Quarters
This means that Samsung, the former Indian smartphone market sales champion, has once again been overtaken by Xiaomi. And since the last quarter, Xiaomi has expanded its lead over Samsung (Samsung shipments of 7.2 million units, market share of 22.3%).
Coincidentally, while Samsung is gradually weakening, the Chinese smartphone manufacturers are getting better positions. VIVO ranks 3 with a market share of 13% (up 108.4% year-on-year), Realme ranked fifth with 6% market share, and OPPO ranks 7th with a market share of 7.6% (up to 9.7% year-on-year).
At present, the Indian smartphone market has a distinctive feature. That is, the local brands and technical strength are very weak. The current major players come from China and South Korea, including Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, and VIVO.
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Looking at the changes in the Indian smartphone market in recent years, we can notice a certain trend – the customers are focusing on low-end products. Generally, in the markets like India, consumer enthusiasm is strong but consumer power is weak.
As for Samsung, it will not leave India. As we all know, Samsung’s performance in the Chinese market has been poor in recent years, and its market share has fallen to single digits. It is difficult to recover in the short term. If Samsung wants to steadily maintain a relatively high growth rate, it must find a new huge market to digest its smartphone production. India’s populous country is undoubtedly the direction of its key investment.
Samsung, which has already regarded India as a very important market, has also begun to learn the low-cost strategy of Chinese manufacturers. In the future, it will launch several thousand yuan machines in the Indian market. However, China’s manufacturers represented by Xiaomi, price is only a means to win. The core is the excellent products and stable supply chain system, as well as the understanding of new retail.
We mean if Samsung simply introduces cheap models, and doesn’t pay attention to other factors, it will still be quite difficult to shake the Chinese smartphone manufacturers in the Indian market.
