NEW DELHI: A year after Xiaomi has displaced Samsung to be the top smartphone brand in India, yet another Chinese brand is steadily growing to take over the Korean giant. During the festive quarters of October-December in 2019, Vivo has replaced Samsung as the second largest smartphone vendor in the country with mammoth 96.5 per cent year-on-year growth, finds International Data Corporation (IDC).
The BBK Electronics-owned brand garnered a market share of 18.8 per cent in the fourth quarter helped by its aggressive focus on offline market and price cuts on several models, while Samsung follows closely at 15.5 per cent.
Further, Vivo has shipped 6.9 million units and Samsung’s shipments stood at 5.7 million units in fourth quarter, falling from 6.8 million a year ago. For the full calendar year, however, Samsung still holds the second spot even though its shipment volumes fell by 2.8 per cent year-on-year. Market leader Xiaomi has retained its top position registering annual shipments of 43.6 million units in 2019 — the highest ever smartphone shipments made by any brand in a year — and with a growth of 9.2 per cent.
It also continued to dominate in the fourth quarter with 15.9 per cent growth on the back of newly launched Redmi Note 8 Pro series. Others including Oppo grew 88.4 per cent on the back of its affordable A series and launch of Reno 2 series, while Realme slipped to the fifth position during the fourth quarter. Still, the two-year-old Realme remains the fastest-growing brand in 2019 having managed to ship 16.2 million units, a jump from a meagre 4.4 million units in 2018. Total shipment, which includes both smartphones and feature phones, was at 282.9 million units in 2019, down 12.3 per cent on year due to the roll out of fewer 4G-ready feature phones.
“The smartphone market, which grew 8 per cent in 2019 will see modest single digit growth in 2020 as well,” said Navkendar Singh, research director, Client Devices, IDC India, adding companies should gear up to enable migration of the massive feature phone user base in India. IDC said the year 2019 also witnessed longer inventory cycles in the offline channel.