Samsung Leads Indian Smartphone Market in Third Quarter: Counterpoint

Growing consumer preference for Internet-enabled phones and falling prices has helped smartphone sales in India to grow 65 percent to 23.5 million units in the third quarter of 2014, a report by Counterpoint Research said on Tuesday.

This is against sales of over 14 million smartphones sales in July-September 2013 period, Counterpoint said in its Market Monitor Q3 2014 Report.

On a quarter on quarter basis, sales were up over 23 percent from about 19 million units in April-June 2014 quarter.

"The growing need for consumers flocking to the internet using mobile phones coupled with rapidly declining average selling price (ASP) of smartphones has been the key drivers of uptake of smartphones in India," Counterpoint Research Senior Consultant Tina Lu said.

The declining smartphone ASPs is result of proliferation of not only local brands entering a price-war but also the highly price-competitive Chinese brands like Xiaomi entering the Indian market, Lu added.

Korean electronics giant Samsung led the market with 25.1 percent share of the smartphone segment in the quarter under review, falling slightly from 25.3 percent in Q2 2014.

(Also see: Samsung Still the Biggest Mobile Vendor in India: IDC)

Domestic firm Micromax, on the other hand, saw its share growing from 19.1 percent in April-June 2014 to 20.4 percent in Q3 2014.

Karbonn had 9.6 percent share, while Motorola and Sony followed in the list with 4.7 percent and 4.5 percent share, respectively.

The quarter was marked with many brands now shipping more than a million smartphones per quarter joining the likes of Samsung, Micromax and Karbonn.

Helped by a leaner go-to-market strategy coupled with exciting portfolio of Moto X, Moto G and Moto E phones at competitive price points, Motorola shipped more than one million smartphones for the first time in a quarter in Q3 2014.

Similarly, Sony and Lava also crossed one million unit mark. Apple also crossed one million units of cumulative iPhone shipments for the first time in its fiscal year ever for India market.