India smartphone market grows 20% in Q2 2018, Xiaomi leads tally: IDC

New Delhi: Smartphone shipments grew 20 percent to 33.5 million units in the June quarter 2018 compared to the year-ago period, boosted by launch of online exclusive devices as well as strong shipments by offline retail-heavy players, research firm IDC today said.

Chinese major Xiaomi retained the top spot by shipping 10 million units and capturing 29.7 percent share, followed by Samsung 23.9 percent share (8 million units) and Vivo with 12.6 percent share (4.2 million units), the data showed.

Oppo and Transsion followed in the tally with 7.6 percent and 5 percent share in June 2018 quarter.

IDC believes that this growth is the result of a slew of online exclusive launches and strong shipments by offline heavy vendors on the back of high decibel promotional activities and channel schemes, it said.

"India will be the fastest growing, large smartphone market for the next few years, making it a must for any smartphone player to be here. However, with increasing consolidation, it will be difficult for any new brand to carve a space here," IDC India Associate Research Director (Client Devices) Navkendar Singh said.

He added the Indian smartphone market is expected to continue growing in low double-digits for the next couple of years.

"Second half of 2018, with multiple sale events in the run-up to the Diwali festival, will be even bigger with growing aggression by online players, the sustained relevance of offline channel and several new launches planned by key vendors across price segments," Singh said.

Also, the market is seeing rapid consolidation at the top end as the top 5 vendors made up 79 percent of the smartphone market in the second quarter of 2018, marginalising smaller brands, IDC India Associate Research Manager (Client Devices) Upasana Joshi said.

"The growing popularity of financing schemes in the offline channel across model portfolios by almost all vendors is driving affordability and thus, pushing the overall smartphone average selling price (ASP) to a record high of USD 167 (about Rs 11,620) in reported quarter from USD 157 (about Rs 10,924) in April-June 2017," Joshi added.

The premium end of the market (USD 500 and above) grew almost two times year-on-year mainly due to continued strong shipments of Samsung Galaxy S9 series and OnePlus 6.

The feature phone market "remained resilient" with shipments of 44 million units in June quarter 2018, registering a growth of 29 percent over the year-ago period, IDC said.

Reliance Jio, the main driver of the 4G feature phone segment with its JioPhone range of phones, remained the top vendor in the overall feature phone market, it added.

However, the 4G feature phone market saw a slight decline of 10 percent quarter-on-quarter with 19 million units. IDC attributed the drop to JioPhone inventory buildup from March quarter 2018.

"The 2G feature phone segment continued to decline further as local players struggle for survival in this segment and the segment is losing relevance due to the aggressive push in the 4G feature phone segment by Reliance Jio," IDC said.