The exploded adoption of smartphones in India has made festival seasons even more memorable. According to Counterpoint Research, smartphone sales in India during the Diwali festive season (October 9 – November 8, 2018) grew a significant 26% compared to the last year’s festive season. The growth was largely driven by the top two e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon through their Big Billion Days Sale and Great Indian Festival, respectively. Interestingly, the online channels accounted for a record half of the total smartphones sold during the Indian Diwali Festive Season.
Apart from Amazon and Flipkart, a large credit also goes to Xiaomi, which is ruling India’s online smartphone market. The huge discounts on Mi devices, with no-cost EMI on debit and credit card and many other attractive offers, have helped Xiaomi to sell a record number of devices during India’s festive season.
Smartphone Sales During India Festive Season: Key Highlights
- The top three smartphone brands – Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme – captured 57% share of the total smartphone sales during India’s Diwali festive season.
- Xiaomi, once again, led India’s overall smartphone market during Diwali festive season, with a significant 29% share!
- Three Chinese smartphone brands – Xiaomi, Realme and Huawei – have dominated India’s online segment during Diwali festive season.
- Xiaomi also performed exceptionally well in online segment, capturing a whopping 43% share of online smartphone sales during the Diwali festival season.
- The newly launched online-only smartphone brand Realme had registered a record festive performance for any new brand ever in India. With 18% share, Realme becomes the second largest smartphone brand across the e-commerce channels.
- Realme also captured a notable 9% share of the overall Diwali festive season smartphone sales.
- When it comes to offline smartphone sales during India’s festive season, Samsung emerged as the top brand with a massive 30% share.
- The top three smartphone brands, Samsung, Vivo and Xiaomi captured 58% of the total offline sales during Diwali festive season in India.
- Emerging brands such as OnePlus, Pocophone, Asus and HMD Nokia have also registered strong uptake during India’s festive season.
- Due to its high pricing, the newly launched iPhone models and some of the older iPhones had received a relatively lukewarm response compared to the rest of the brands.
It is not surprising that Xiaomi and Samsung have been dominating India’s smartphone market for a quite long time now. In Q3 2018, the smartphone shipments in India grew a healthy 24% YoY and 5% QoQ. Together, Xiaomi and Samsung accounted for 50% of India smartphone shipments in the third quarter.
The exploded adoption of smartphones has helped India to improve its global ranking and became the largest smartphone market, trailing behind China only, by the number of smartphone users. About 337 million people in India is estimated to own a smartphone by the end of 2018.
