Clash of the titans: Samsung, Micromax locked in for top two slots in India's smartphone market

NEW DELHI: Samsung and Micromax are locked in for the top two slots in India’s surging and lucrative smartphone market but there’s no clear winner. While one research agency says that home-bred Micromax had dethroned Samsung as the leader, another has kept the Korean major at the top of the list.

UK-based research firm Canalys on Wednesday said Micromax accounted for 22% of the smartphones shipped into India in the October-December quarter, and put Samsung at 20%. However, Hong Kongbased Counterpoint Technologies said Samsung holds the lead with 27.4% share. Micromax came in second at 19.5%. Asim Warsi, vice-president for marketing mobile business at Samsung, cited data from research firm GfK to show that Samsung continues to hold the lead position in the domestic smartphone market with a volume share of 34.3% — more than double that of the next player—and value share of 35.8%.

Over 2014, the company’s value share was four times the next player’s at 40.2%, while volume share was double at 35.7%. “There are that many research firms and methodologies that each work with and I think it’s a result of that, that there is disparity and divergence in numbers. Unfortunately, it’s a significant disparity,” Warsi said. The company added that it was going by the most widespread research by GfK, which measures OTC retail sales across 50,000 Indian cities. Canalys and Counterpoint track shipments into India.

Canalys’ analyst Rushabh Doshi, however, backed the report, saying that Micromax’s effective and quickerthan-competition targeting of consumer preference in the affordable segment (Rs 9,000-15,000), besides relatively cheaper devices in the Canvas range helped it move up.

It is the second time that Samsung has faced such a situation —in August 2014 Counterpoint had put Micromax ahead of the South Korean behemoth in terms of the total number of units shipped. Samsung had disputed the findings at that time as well. The latest figures come at a time when Samsung’s hold over the global smartphone market has been slipping dramatically. Recent data from research firm Strategy Analytics showed that the smartphone giant has had to share the spot for the world’s largest smartphone maker with Apple, with 19.6% share each, during the October-December period.


In emerging markets, Samsung’s share in smartphones sold is being squeezed by lowcost handset vendors and by Apple in the premium segment. The company reported a 64% drop in operating profit from mobile phones to $1.80 billion in Q3 from a year ago. Mobile phones now account for only 37% of the company's operating profit, compared with 75% in the first quarter. It was the mobile division's fifth consecutive quarter of decline.

The company is pinning its hopes of revival on the Z1, the first low-cost smartphone (Rs 5,999) which runs on an inhouse developed operating system called Tizen. “Early into the launch, it is meeting with demand better-than-expectations and showing very good uptakes. We see Z1 helping us fuel our growth in mass smartphones alongside our other devices,” Warsi added.

Canalys’ findings may well propel Samsung to enhance its product portfolio even as it continues to be criticised for over-pricing its flagship devices, which have not moved the needle in the premium segment where Apple has created a huge following with success of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

Samsung’s Warsi added that the company will launch more variants to the Galaxy Core Prime and Grand Prime smartphones, which have been selling well in the affordable segment, in the coming months.

Executives at IDC indicated that while Samsung may still be the smartphone leader in India, the gap between the two is narrowing fast. For the quarter ended September, IDC had put Samsung as No. 1 with 24% share, followed by Micromax with 20%, Lava and Karbonn at 8% each, and Motorola trailing with 5% of the market that grew by 82% year-on-year.

In total, 21.6 million smartphones were shipped into India in the October-December period, up from 18.9 million in the third quarter, Canalys said. The firm said that total smartphone shipments surged 90% from the year-ago period.

The findings showed that 23% of shipments were of devices priced under $100 (Rs 6,000), while 41% were of devices in the $100-$200 bracket (Rs 6,000-Rs 12,000).