- Smartphone shipments cross 11.1 million units; Samsung still the market leader in smartphones category with Micromax and Karbonn at #2 and #3, respectively. Top 3 vendors make up nearly 63.1% of the total smartphone shipments.
- Featurephone segment witnesses the first ever negative growth in shipments in the India Mobile handsets market.
According to CMR’s India Mobile Handsets Market Review, 3Q 2013, November 2013 release, India registered 62.9 million mobile handset shipments for the period July-September (3Q) 2013. During the same period, 11.1 million smartphones were shipped in the country.
Commenting on the results, Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice said, “We have been saying that the way forward is smartphones. JAS 2013 is the first quarter to actually report this trend in numbers. This means vendors can expect to see large opportunities in the upgrades market where many featurephone users will upgrade to a smartphone. It may also so happen that new smartphone purchases register lower volumes vis-à-vis upgrades. But this phenomenon may be a few quarters away.”
“So there is going to be a huge opportunity as well as competition in the entry- to mid-level smartphone segments, which is where the volumes would remain for a while,” Faisal further added.
India Smartphones Market
The India smartphones market during July-September 2013 saw a rise in shipments by 152.3% over and above the July-September 2012 number, taking the contribution of smartphones to 17.6% of total mobile handset shipments during the period July-September 2013.
Commenting on these results, Tarun Pathak, Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice said, “The India smartphones market continues to be a competitive space with close to brands vying with each other. Going forward, we expect this segment to be even more competitive as we expect some of the China-based ODM partners entering directly into the India market during 1H 2014. It will be interesting to see what impact this will have on the market share of existing smartphone players.”
“Another interesting observation is that local handset brands have now close to 47% market share in the India smartphones market and this momentum has been a source of confidence to a couple of players to enter new geographies outside India where the smartphone market is on the rise. Going forward 3G smartphone shipments will continue to rise and we can expect to see a few smartphone vendors introduce 4G-enabled devices by the end of 2013,” Tarun concluded.
Notes for Editors
- This release is a part of the CyberMedia Research (CMR) Smart Mobility Market Programme.
- CyberMedia Research (CMR) uses the term “shipments” to describe the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. For the convenience of media, the term shipments has been replaced by ‘sales’ in the press release, but this reflects the market size in terms of units of mobile handsets and not their absolute value. In the case of handsets imported into the country it represents the number leaving the first warehouse to OEMs, distributors and retailers. CyberMedia Research does not track the number of handsets brought on their person by individual passengers landing on Indian soil from overseas destinations or ‘grey market’ handsets. These are, therefore, not part of the CyberMedia Research numbers reported here.
- CyberMedia Research (CMR) tracks shipments of mobile handsets on a monthly basis. However, as per convention, the market size is reported on a calendar quarter basis where appropriate to the context; in all such cases this refers to an aggregated number for the three calendar months in the quarter to which the press release refers.
