India
may be the fastest growing smartphone market in Asia, but for the first time
the market had shrank in the fourth quarter of the year 2014. The shipments had
slowed down by number of 4 percent for the first time. According to reports
from International Data Corporation (IDC), the Indian smartphone market
declined by 4 percent as compared to the 2013’s quarter.
The
overall Indian mobile market witnessed 64.3 million units in 2014’s fourth
quarter, thus reflecting a drop of nearly 11 percent over the third quarter and
leading to an annual decline of 5 percent. The decline is mainly because of the
large inventories in the distribution channels. The fall was also seen in the
feature phone market, which crashed by 14 percent Here’s what iBall Director
has to say:
This is a temporary fall impacted by the seasonally dull fourth quarter. Further, in 2014 the festival season of Diwali came in a little earlier, prompting manufacturers to ship handsets as early as September itself
- Sandeep Parasrampuria
SN
Rai, the co-founder and director at Lava Mobile regarding this topic said that,
the main thing that impacted importers were the supply constraints on components.
He also added that in spite of this his company’s sales were not affected by
this.
IDC
reports also showed that, South Korean Giant Samsung still maintained its
leadership position in Indian market with 22 percent market share followed by
Micromax at 18 percent. But this contradicted the reports of global research
firm Canalys, which put that Samsung trailed Micromax.
With
Samsung and Micromax at first and second postion, Intex came in third postion
with 8 percent market share in the fourth quarter, which is quite good for
Intex who didn’t stand among the top five vendors in third quarter. Intex
registered a 70 percent sales rise in the fourth quarter.
Although
there was a ban on one of the models of Xiaomi but still the Chinese smartphone
maker made it to the top five smartphone vendors through its online marketing strategy.
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IDC
reports also showed that there was huge migration from feature phones to
smartphones. Smartphones comprised of 35 percent of the overall mobile business
in the fourth quarter which is a 13 percent up in number as compared to 2013.
Forecast
According
to Karan Thakkar, Senior Market Analyst IDC India, in the current scenario,
there is a huge demand for phones with high specifications and low price points.
And this trend seems to continue over the coming 4-6 quarters, after that
mobile consumers are expected to roll back to those vendors who charge wisely
for the quality