Last year, Xiaomi tied with Samsung for the top spot in India’s mobile segment, with the Chinese tech giant growing its budget smartphone portfolio. Recently, as per the reports from two market research firms that aggregate data from the Indian market Counterpoint and Canalys, Xiaomi has now claimed that it is the largest smartphone brand in India on the back of Q4 sales.
Counterpoint reported that India’s overall mobile phone shipments grew 37%, with smartphone shipments seeing a 12% increase, with feature phones growing an astonishing 55% during 4Q 2017. As per the reports the company sold 8.2 million smartphones, Samsung trailing with 7.3 million in Q4 2017.
Data from both analyst houses gave Xiaomi a narrow lead over Samsung in the final quarter of 2017, with 27 percent and 25 percent, respectively, according to Canalys and 25 percent versus 23 percent, according to Counterpoint.
Not so surprisingly, Samsung has also contested the claim. A Samsung spokesperson told “TechRadar” that its ahead by some margin in India. As per GfK, which tracks sales to end consumers, in the last quarter, Samsung had a 45% value market share and 40% volume market share although Samsung has not provided any figures to support GfK.
Canalys analyst Rushabh Doshi said, “Samsung has been unable to win over cost-conscious consumers, losing market share in the sub-INR15,000 (US$240) segment to Xiaomi quarter after quarter. Despite its ability to offer better margins and funding to the offline channel, consumer demand for Samsung’s devices has been weak.”
Xiaomi’s strategy has so far rested on flash sales on leading e-commerce sites as Flipkart and Amazon.in, an approach that helped it snatch market share without having to spend heavily on marketing.
Research analysis of these major research firms often depend on different conclusions like device shipments as they use different tracking methods and covering millions of unit sales from the outside of the company’s they’re reporting on is not easy. However, unless Samsung can provide a stronger argument, we’d have to go with other reports.
Stay updated with latest happenings of tech world on the go with Technobugg App, on Android and Windows.
