Chinese smartphones made up 66 percent of Indian market in Q1 2019: Counterpoint

The onslaught of Chinese brands in the Indian smartphone market keeps on growing every year and in the first quarter of 2019, the penetration was a record 66 percent in the Indian market. **Xiaomi** remains the market leader in India but the competition is catching up. [caption id=“attachment_5908851” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Representational image.[/caption] As per Counterpoint, Chinese brands have grown 20 percent year-on-year in the country and the main reason was the growth of Vivo, Realme, and OPPO. Out of the three, Vivo witnessed the maximum growth at 119 percent YoY, while Oppo grew by 28 percent YoY.  The smartphone market in India has been dominated by Xiaomi with 29 percent followed by Samsung at 23 percent. Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint**,** said, “India’s smartphone market continues to attract a lot of attention from global and Chinese players. Data consumption is on the rise and users are upgrading their phones faster as compared to other regions. This has led to users spending more on their purchase which is driving up the overall average selling price (ASP) in the market." India’s total smartphone shipments have grown by 4 percent YoY with a slow start in the festive season but sales picking up later in the quarter. “This quarter we have seen all major brands expanding their footprint in offline channels to gain market share. Xiaomi has laid out big plans for offline expansion by increasing its number of retail stores (Mi Preferred Partners), Mi Homes, and Mi Stores specifically to target smaller towns.” said Anshika Jain, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research. The Redmi 6A remains the top smartphone model sold in the country last quarter followed by  Xiaomi Note 6 Pro (Review) , Redmi Y2 (Review) , **Samsung Galaxy M20 (Review)**, and Galaxy A50 (Review) . As a matter of fact, the top 10 models contributed to 32 percent of overall smartphone shipments. The Rs 15,000 - Rs 20,000 was the fastest growing smartphone segment with a 240 percent growth.