With price for smartphones going down day-by-day, India sees an exponential growth in Smartphone market by around 229 % year to year in the third quarter of 2013 according to the International Data Corporation‘s (IDC) quarterly mobile phone tracker. Smartphone vendors shipped a total of 12.8 million smartphones to India in Q3 2013 alone, compared to the 3.8 million units in the same period of 2012.
Interestingly Indians now prefer smartphones over feature phones as they can get hold on budget Android smartphones from local vendors like Micromax and Karbonn who are trying to bring down the cost.
“The change agents for this rapid shift of consumer preference towards Smartphones have been the narrowing price gap between Feature phones and Smartphones. The Smartphone market is expected to maintain these elevated levels of growth in the near future” comments Kiran Kumar, Research Manager with IDC India.
Smartphone shipment in India grew by 28% over the units shipped in the second quarter of 2013. Overall mobile phone market in India which include both Feature Phones and Smartphones had recorded a year over year (YoY) growth of 12% and a 7% quarter over quarter (QoQ) growth, with the share of feature phones sliding further to make 81% of the total market in third quarter 2013 despite the feature phone market growing at 3% in 3Q 2013 over 2Q 2013.
Bigger screen smartphone or so called “phablets” continue to show sustained growth in third quarter of 2013 and contributed 23% in the overall market in terms of volume.
Indian vendors such as Micromax and Karbonn dipped their ranking to International vendors Samsung and Nokia who where powered by multiple product launch. Samsung still ranks the top position in Indian smartphone market with around 33% market share, followed by Indian vendor Micromax with 17% market share and Karbonn with 11% smartphone market share. Interestingly Nokia’s strong brand helped the Lumia range of devices to grow in Indian smartphone market accounting for 5% market share.