Samsung still the biggest vendor in India's smartphone market : IDC

Samsung is holding on to the number one position in India's smart phone market, even as homegrown handset maker Micromax is gaining strength, an International Data Corporation (IDC) report on India's mobile market for the second quarter of the financial year showed.

Micromax, which an earlier report by Counterpoint Research said had overtaken Samsung as the country's top smart phone brand, is still No 2 in domestic sales, says the IDC report.

Whatever, the truth maybe, Jaideep Mehta, Vice-President and General Manager, South Asia of IDC, said in a statement Samsung has held on to its leadership position in the Indian mobile market.

“It is noteworthy that Micromax is growing faster. Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively, and also needs a blockbuster product at the high-end to regain momentum,” Mehta said in the statement.

According to IDC, Samsung was the market leader with a share of 17 per cent, Micromax had a share of 14 per cent of the market. Micromax and Lava have witnessed a growth rate of 18 per cent and 54 per cent growth, respectively in the second quarter, the report said.

The overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in Q2 2014, a 5 percent increase over Q1 2014. The quarter-over-quarter growth can be attributed to both product categories (i.e. smartphones and feature phones), the research firm said.

The IDC report said that smartphone market in India maintained its growth impetus with smartphone shipments achieving year-on-year growth of 84 percent in Q2 2014 and a quarter-over-quarter growth of 11 percent. Vendors shipped a total of 18.42 million Smartphones in Q2 2014 compared to 10.02 million in the same period of 2013.