BHUBANESWAR: SoftBank-funded Flipkart and Amazon continue to embrace new strategies to win the race in the smartphone category — the cream of the crop for the e-commerce giants.
“Flipkart and Amazon have scaled up their operations in the recent quarters, especially in the smartphone segment, which is a major value-driving category for these platforms,” said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint. Both the parties will keep fighting to grab the largest market share of the fledgeling e-commerce market, which is slated to cross $50 billion in 2018.
While Flipkart continued its dominance in the online smartphone market with 54 per cent share, Amazon stood second with 30 per cent followed by Mi.com with 14 per cent market share, said the latest research from Counterpoint Research.
Smartphones are among the highest-selling products and have emerged as the highest revenue-generating category for e-commerce portals. Overall, these portals captured a record 38 per cent share of the total smartphone channels in India in the first quarter of 2018.
The e-commerce segment grew faster than the offline segment during Q1 2018. “While the smartphone shipments in the offline segment declined by three per cent, the online segment grew by four per cent (year-on-year),” said Karn Chauhan, research analyst at Counterpoint.
This was driven by the rise in internet users, cheaper models launching on online platforms coupled with aggressive offers. Additionally, smartphone brands have now adopted a multi-channel strategy instead of relying on a single channel for distribution of their products and this has increased the competition over the past quarters,” Chauhan said.
When it comes to market share by brands, Chinese smartphone-maker Xiaomi maintains its supremacy with a share of 57 per cent during the period under review, followed by Samsung (14 per cent) and Huawei (Honor) (eight per cent).
Close to 30 exclusive smartphone models were launched in Q1 2018, including Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and Huawei Honor 9 Lite. The report reveals that attractive full-screen displays, high capacity batteries and AI features like face recognition were key differentiators for new launches. “While entry-level shipments were driven by Xiaomi, the premium was driven by One plus,” it said.