Lenovo Jumps to No.3 in Indian Smartphone Market as Local Players Continue to Struggle-Canalys Report

At a time when the global market for smartphones is slacking, India seems to have registered a laudable double-digit percentage increase when it comes to Year-on-Year shipment growth. Amidst the leap however many of the other local major players have seen a (relative) dip in sales.

The report from Canalys reveals that Samsung has still got its grips on the market and leads by accounting for almost a quarter of the Indian smartphone market. Micromax managed to cling on to the second place in spite of shipments plummeting by 20%, a downfall attributed to the inventory build-up in its distribution network.
The Lenovo-Motorola duo seems to be the top gainer last year with the annual shipment numbers just shy of 3-Million units which is a whopping 60% Y-o-Y growth. This surge in the numbers has propelled Lenovo to the third place leaving behind Intex. It is also worth noticing that local players including Karbonn, Lava and Intex have suffered declines in shipments.

Canalys Mobile Analyst Rushabh Doshi giving his inputs said “In addition, Chinese vendors, such as Vivo and Xiaomi, continue to make inroads with low-cost LTE smartphones. The growing importance of online retail has lowered barriers to entry, enabling the vendors to grow quickly without having to invest time and resources in building a complex sales channel. Chinese markets are instead investing heavily in marketing, brand recognition and cementing their place in the market.”
Adding to that is the fact that ecommerce companies have been aggressively spreading their reach in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, this is bringing access to the online exclusive smartphones for everyone. I had personally noticed a cyber café in a village advertising that they help people buy smartphones online for a nominal fee.
As we have seen it in the past, the stats from different agencies are bound to differ and it wouldn’t surprise us if other report contradicts the current ones as the agencies use different approaches to compute the numbers. It would also be worth waiting for the IDC report for 2015 on the total smartphone shipments in the country.