Xiaomi Continues to Dominate India’s Smartphone Market

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Xiaomi continues its domination of the India Smartphone market with 28.9% of the fourth quarter market share. Compared to 2017 Q4, they grew 28.6% in sales in 2018 Q4.

The Xiaomi Redmi series phones and the opening of rural stores helped boost sales.

Xiaomi’s Redmi 5A and Redmi Note 5/Pro series emerged as the fastest selling devices of 2018 across brands. This drove 10 million shipments each in the entire year.

One US dollar is equal to about 70 Indian Rupee. The overall smartphone average selling price in India was flat in 2018 at US$158. The US$100-US$200 segment was more than half of the smartphone market in India.

The Redmi Note 5/Pro has a 5.99-inch screen and pricing was reduced to about 12,000 (US$171). They introduced on November 22, 2018 the new Redmi Note 6 Pro has pricing of around 16000 Indian Rupee (US$228). The Redmi Note 6 Pro has a 6.26-inch screen, a resolution of 1080×2280 pixels and four cameras. Both are around US$200.

Samsung held onto second place in the market but dropped 7.9% in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Overall Global Smartphone market shrank

Smartphone sales declined in 2018 in the US, Europe, and China markets. India is the second largest market and is one of the few growth markets for smartphones.

IHS Markit reported that the global smartphone market ended 2018 with shipments down 2.4% compared to 2017. There were 1.44 billion units in 2017 and were down to 1.41 billion units in 2018.

Canalys estimates shipments fell 12% in China in 2018 and expects smartphone shipments in 2019 to drop another 3%. China had 390 million units shipped in 2018. India had 145 million units shipped in 2018.


Samsung and Apple had declining sales overall

Xiaomi and Huawei are growing while Samsung and Apple are not.

SOURCES: IDC, IHS Markit, Canalys

Written by Christina Wong. Nextbigfuture.com