Xiaomi reportedly overtakes Samsung as top smartphone vendor in India

Final updated: January 24th, 2018 at 17:26 UTC+01:00

After potentially losing the top spot in feature phone sales to Reliance Jio in Q4 2017, Samsung has some bad news on the smartphone front as well. According to the latest data from market enquiry firm Canalys, Xiaomi beat Samsung to emerge equally the top smartphone vendor in India this part quarter.

Canalys says Xiaomi shipped close to 8.two meg units compared to Samsung's seven.3 meg smartphone shipments in Q4 2017. Xiaomi's market share for the quarter stood at 27%, while Samsung came in 2nd place at 25%. Together, they accounted for more fifty% of the smartphone market share in Republic of india for Q4 2017. Samsung registered an annual growth of 17%, but that was not enough to retain the acme spot in the Indian marketplace. Samsung was followed by Vivo, Oppo, and Lenovo for the next three spots.

Not final, but quite possible

It is worth pointing that smartphone shipment reports from market research firms are not always accurate and are typically based on incomplete and unofficial sources of information. In fact, reports from different firms often publish contradictory findings. However, it is non impossible that Xiaomi took over the top position from Samsung in India, given that in that location were visible signs of it last year.

Many marketplace research firms were pointing to Xiaomi's changing fortunes in Republic of india. In October, information from Counterpoint Research showed that while Samsung maintained its atomic number 82 in Q3 2017, Xiaomi was at a hitting distance to take over the meridian position. This was followed by Q3 2017 data from IDC which showed that both Samsung and Xiaomi were both tied at 23.5% market share.

An interesting factor to notation in all these reports is that sales of Samsung smartphones are not declining in Bharat, simply instead Xiaomi is growing at a much faster rate than Samsung. The smartphone market in Bharat is still growing and Xiaomi is taking a much larger pie of the growing market. The fact that Samsung reported a 27% increase in mobile revenues in Republic of india amidst all this noise of Xiaomi beating Samsung speaks volumes about the nature of expanding smartphone market in Bharat.

Samsung's weak point in India seems to be its mid-range and upkeep devices. None of them matches Xiaomi's value for coin offerings. There has been a lot of talk about Samsung revamping its strategy in India to counter Xiaomi. However, the efforts and the results so far are null substantial. It will be interesting to meet how Samsung responds to Xiaomi's onslaught in 2018.