Indian smartphone shipments up 14.5% YoY in 2018; Xiaomi continues to lead with 28.9% share: IDC

As per IDC’s Quarterly mobile phone tracker, the Indian smartphone market has shipped 142.3 million units in 2018, registering a healthy 14.5% year-on-year (YoY) growth as compared to 2017. Though the Q3 2018 has been the strongest quarter, the market saw a sequential decline of 15.1% in Q4 2018 owing to high channel inventory. The healthy annual growth of 19.5% was driven primarily by multiple sales by e-tailers beyond the festive Diwali period lasting into December. However, the offline channel had a muted year with a modest 6.7% annual growth in 2018 and growing 5% sequentially in Q4 2018. With the government initiative to push local manufacturing in India, 2018 witnessed further duty hikes on mobile phone components, coupled with weakened rupee further added to the challenges of the long tail of brands outside the Top 5. The overall smartphone average selling price remained flat in 2018 at Rs. 11,000 approx, with high shipments in the mass segment of Rs. 7,000 to Rs. 14,000, it accounted for more than half of the smartphone market in India. The feature phone market, which makes up 56.0% of the total mobile phone market clocked 181.3 million-unit shipments in 2018, with 10.6% YoY growth. This was primarily driven ...

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