For over a year now, India has been loosely considered as the world’s second-largest smartphone market. However, Counterpoint Research for the smartphone market in 2019 shows that India has officially surpassed the U.S. It is now officially the world’s second-largest smartphone market. Smartphone shipment in India hit 158 million units in 2019, a year-on-year increase of 7%. However, India is the second-largest behind China in terms of unit shipments and revenue.
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Nevertheless, it is very interesting that India’s second place is largely due to Chinese smartphone manufacturers. Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo/Realme and other Chinese mobile phone companies have 72% of the entire Indian mobile phone market. Xiaomi, in particular, sold 44 million units in the Indian market in 2019. This is more than its sales in China and India is now Xiaomi’s most lucrative market.
Counterpoint Research also shows that Realme has become the fastest-growing smartphone brand in the Indian market with a growth rate of 255%. Its market share has increased from 3% in 2018 to 10% now. In addition, Vivo and Oppo also have growth rates of 76% and 28%, respectively.
Apart from Samsung which held on to the second spot with a market share of 21% (drops YoY – it had 24% in 2018), all other smartphone makers in the top 5 are Chinese manufacturers.
