4G smartphone shipments in India grew 24.8% quarter-on-quarter in Q3 2016 owing to the roll out of Reliance Jio’s 4G network, research firm IDC said in its Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker report. At least 7 out of 10 smartphone shipped by offline vendors in Q3 2016 were 4G-enabled, and 9 out of 10 smartphone sold by online vendors had 4G.
Overall, the Indian smartphone industry shipments crossed 30 million units (32.3 million) for the first time in this quarter, up 17.5 quarter-on-quarter from 27.5 million shipments. On a year-on-year basis smartphone shipments were up by 11%.
Online shipments
The growth in smartphone shipments is attributed to festive season sales driven by online retailers, according to IDC. At least 31.6% smartphone shipped were via online channels, registering a 35% quarter-on-quarter growth. Most shipments by key online retails were primarily from China-based vendors. Lenovo Group took the lead with 1/4th of overall online shipments closely followed by Xiaomi.
“Lenovo’s K5 series and Motorola’s G4 series models. Also, Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 3 and newly launched Redmi 3S fuelled the online shipments to a large extent”, added IDC said in its report.
Overall mobile shipments
During Q3 2016, overall mobile phone shipments touched 72.3 million, which is up 18.1% quarter-on-quarter. Feature phone shipments accounted for 55.1% of the shipments (39.9 million units), which is up 18.6% quarter-on-quarter growth and down 12.4% year-on-year.
IDC said that the migration from feature phone to smartphone has slowed down in the country, allowing India-based manufacturers to maintain their dominance in overall mobile industry. Although the feature phone market is dominated by few key vendors, it is witnessing emergence of new brands like Itel and Zen which registered more than double growth in this quarter, added IDC.
Smartphone Shipments by Vendor
–Samsung continues to leads the Indian smartphone market with 23 percentage share with 8 percent QoQ growth and 9.7 percent YoY growth.
–Lenovo Group (including Motorola) took the second from Micromax with 9.6 percent share of smartphones in this quarter. Lenovo’s shipments were up 46.1 percent QoQ.
–Micromax slipped to third position in this quarter with a 7.4% share of overall smarthpne shipments in India. The company’s smartphone shipments were down 32% QoQ, owing to competition from Chinese vendors.
–Xiaomi made its debut in the top 5 vendor list in India for the first time, owning 7.4% of overall smartphone shipments in the market, while it registered a decrease in global shipments. The company registered a 2.5% YoY growth in terms of shipments.
–Reliance Jio’s LYF smartphones continued to hold it’s its fifth position in the quarter. Its smartphone shipments were up 20.9% QoQ.
