The last few quarters have been tough for Samsung in India. According to many shipment trackers, Xiaomi posted stellar growth numbers and toppled Samsung to emerge as the largest smartphone vendor in the country. Though Samsung rubbished all these reports, it did launch more compelling budget smartphones to counter Xiaomi’s Redmi series. It appears the company’s renewed strategy is delivering the desired results.
Last week, Canalys published Q2 smartphone shipment numbers which showed Samsung getting close to dethroning Xiaomi from the top spot in India. Counterpoint Research has released the Q2 market share data today, and it shows Samsung beat Xiaomi to regain the top position it ceded two quarters ago in the country. The Korean company increased its market share from 24% in Q2 2017 to 29% in the second quarter this year, while Xiaomi’s share went up from 16% to 28% during the same period. When compared to Q1 2018, Xiaomi lost 3% market share and relinquished the seat at the top of the table to Samsung in the process.
Vivo, Oppo, and Huawei occupied the next three positions respectively, and together the top five vendors accounted for a whopping 82% of the total shipments, indicating an increasing consolidation in the Indian smartphone market. OnePlus (284%), Honor (188%) and Xiaomi (112%) made the most gains, while Apple had a disappointing quarter with just 1% market share. Overall, the Indian smartphone market grew by a healthy 18% year-on-year in the second quarter.
New Galaxy J models did the trick
The report attributes Samsung’s strong performance to the recently launched Galaxy J series models. Xiaomi's Redmi 5A was the best-selling smartphone in the quarter with 9% market share. Samsung’s recently launched Galaxy J6 came in third by making up 5% of the total smartphones shipped. In what could be termed as a sign of Redmi series’ popularity, three out of the top five bestsellers were from Xiaomi. OnePlus emerged as the market leader in the premium segment with the OnePlus 6 being the bestseller in the category.
Counterpoint has also published market share numbers for feature phones, and Reliance Jio continues to dominate the sales charts with 47% market share. Samsung held on to the second place, but its market share dropped from 27% last year to 9% this year. Feature phone shipments went up by 21% compared to the same period last year and accounted for around 50% of the total mobile phone shipments in the quarter.
