Friday, August 22, 2014
The rise of the cheap smartphones is taking a bite out of Samsung in the Indian market, where Micromax has gained a significant foothold and may well be on its way to swipe the lead away from the Korean giant.
Micromax jumped to the second spot with 18 per cent market share, putting a significant gap between itself and Karbonn in the second quarter this year, according to IDC. Lava followed closely at number four. Meanwhile, Motorola finished fifth¡ªscoring big with shipments that crossed the one million mark within five months of launch, despite being only available online.
The upbeat performance by these smartphone brands led to a sustained period of growth for the Indian smartphone market. Vendors shipped a total of 18.42 million units in the second quarter compared to 10.02 million in the same period of 2013, accounting for year-on-year growth of 84 per cent and quarter-over-quarter growth of 11 per cent.
IDC said this back-to-back volume growth is largely due to the re-defined, low-price smartphone models and continuous migration from feature phones to smartphones. The 71 per cent market that continues to use feature phones indicates greater growth in the future for the Indian smartphone market.
The second quarter has indeed been an exciting quarter for the players in the mobile phone market. Among the top five vendors, Micromax and Lava were said to be the only ones to have outstripped the market growth, with the former toppling Nokia to clinch the number two spot.
Clearly, the entrance of low-priced smartphones has made the competition very stiff at the bottom. With the influx of Chinese vendors and Mozilla's plans to enter the smartphone category at the $50 price level, the low-end segment of the smartphone market is expected to become crucial in the coming quarters.
The sub-$200 category of the smartphone market is already picking up in terms of new shipment share. The contribution from this category stood at 81 per cent during the forecast period.
This should put Samsung on tenterhooks because seeing how things are progressing, its 29 per cent market share does not guarantee a future of sustained success as India's smartphone market leader. Micromax or another entrant in the low-level smartphone sub-segment could easily find its way to the top and displace it.
"Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively, and also needs a blockbuster product at the high end to regain momentum," said Jaideep Mehta, VP and GM of South Asia at IDC.
Phablets are becoming a hit as well. It represented 5.4 per cent of the overall smartphone segment. This category grew by 20 per cent quarter-on-quarter in terms of sheer volume. More than half of the phablets shipped were in the under-$250 price band¡ªthe price sub-segment Indian vendors dominate.
"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 256MB," said Karan Thakkar Senior Market Analyst at IDC India.
Thakkar added that while this ultra low cost segment may not sound a viable option to the repeat buyers, it certainly is a big draw for the targeted consumers, and this is all that matters.
By: DocMemory
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