India continues to be the second biggest smartphone market in the world, with over 152 million units that calculates 8.0% year-over-year (YoY) growth, according to IDC. The top 5 smartphone manufacturer who sold the most amount of units in India for 2019 were: Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, OPPO and realme.
In regards to Q4 2019, the market saw a growth of 5.5% YoY, shipping a total of 36.9 million smartphone units. This does a calculate 20.8% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) decline but that is expected as Q3 of a year will see huge shipment numbers due to Diwali festive sales period. Online channels saw a growth of 11.2% YoY in Q4 2019 with 43.3% market share and offline channels saw a tiny growth of 1.4% YoY
Xiaomi dominated the Indian market, selling a whopping 43.6 million units in 2019. Its 9.2% YoY growth can be explained with the launch of its popular Redmi Note 7 Pro, Redmi 6A and the newer Redmi 8/Note 8 series. Vivo took the second place for Q4 2019, with 6.9 million units, seeing a massive growth of 96.5% compared to Q4 2018.
While Samsung remained at second place for overall smartphone shipments in 2019, its slipped to third place during Q4 2019, selling 5.7 million units that calculates to a decline of 15.4% compared to Q4 2018. OPPO, on the other hand saw a phenomenal growth of 88.4% YoY growth, shipping 4.8 million units and realme settled at 5th place, selling 4.7 million units but still seeing a growth of 74.1% YoY.
Commenting on the report, Upasana Joshi, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India said:
The online growth momentum continued through the year with a record share of 41.7% in 2019, growing by 18.4% YoY annually due to deep discounts, cashback offers, buyback/exchange schemes, and complete protection offers clubbed with attractive financing schemes like No Cost EMIs across major model line ups and brands.