Around 68.3% of the smartphones shipped in India during the first quarter of the calendar year 2014 (i.e. January-March 2014) were 3G enabled devices, according to CyberMedia Research’s Mobile Handsets Market Review. As per the report, around 14.5 million smartphones were shipped in India, registering a 219.4% growth year-on-year (YoY) and a 1.9% growth from the previous quarter. It’s worth noting here that the previous quarter was the holiday quarter where device sales tends to be the strongest. Samsung was apparently the top smartphone player in India for the quarter, accounting for 43.2% of the total smartphone shipments for the quarter. This is an increase from 40.4% share in the previous quarter. Samsung was followed by Micromax which has increased its share to 17.5% from 15.7% in the previous quarter. Karbonn continues to be in the third place, although its share has more than halved to 5.2% for the quarter, down from 11.1% share in the previous quarter. Feature phone shipments: The feature phone shipments dipped to 44.4 million for the quarter, down by 6.5% YoY and 21.1% QoQ. This dip could probably be because of two reasons - Firstly, the holiday quarter effect and secondly, due to people transitioning from feature phones to smartphones. Note that CyberMedia Research uses the term shipments to describe the number of handsets leaving the factory premises for OEM sales or stocking by distributors and retailers. In the case of handsets imported into the country, it represents the number leaving the first warehouse to…
