Xiaomi pips Samsung to become India's first choice in handsets

NEW DELHI: Xiaomi has emerged the country’s top handset maker in the December quarter, outselling Samsung in the smartphone plus featurephone market for the first time, data from market intelligence provider International Data Corporation shows.

The Chinese phonemaker topped the overall handset market with 16% share in the quarter, trailed by Samsung and Reliance Retail, IDC said on Friday. It didn’t give the figures for the second and third players.

The Korean brand also slipped behind Apple’s iPhone in the premium segment of $500 and more.


Xiaomi India head and global vice president Manu Jain claimed the brand’s smartphone sales have surpassed Samsung and Reliance Retail’s feature phones and smartphones put together.

Samsung declined to comment to ET’s emailed queries.

For the whole of 2019, Xiaomi sold 43.6 million units, the highest smartphone shipments made by any brand in a year so far, with a growth of 9.2% on year, even as the overall Indian mobile phone market shrank by 12.5% with annual shipment of 282.9 million units, IDC said.

The smartphone segment grew a modest 8%, shipping 152.5 million units in 2019, though it was enough for India to become its second largest market, surpassing the US and trailing China.

Samsung’s smartphone shipments fell 2.8% on year — leaving it with 20.3% market share versus Xiaomi’s 28.6% for 2019 — as other Chinese brands, too, grew share. Vivo, Oppo and Realme followed the top two with shares of 10%, 7.2% and 3.2%, respectively.

Average selling price of smartphones grew 2.8% year on year at $163 in the country, IDC said.

The mid-range segment of $200-500 accounted for the strongest on year growth at 55.2%, and accounted for 19.3% of the overall smartphone market. Vivo is the leader in this segment with market share of 28% in 2019, followed by OnePlus at 20.2%.

In the $500+ segment, Apple took leadership position with 47.4% market share in 2019, driven by aggressive price drops on previous generation models and a lower iPhone 11 launch price compared to the XR, IDC said.

“IDC expects the India smartphone market to see modest single digit growth in 2020 as well,” said Navkendar Singh, research director, client devices & IPDS, at IDC India. “As organic growth becomes challenging with increasing replacement cycles, it is imperative for the smartphone ecosystem to put its energy and focus on enabling migration of the massive feature phone user base in India in addition to continue offering compelling propositions at the mid-premium segment to boost faster upgrades,” he said.