Reliance Jio, with a market share of 7.1 per cent, has replaced Lava as the fifth largest smartphone vendor in the first quarter of calendar 2016 with huge shipments of 4G devices, according to research firm IDC. Lava’s share dipped to below 5 per cent in the period. Samsung continues to lead the 4G smartphone market, followed by Lenovo and Reliance Jio, it said.
Reliance Jio has started building the Voice over LTE (VoLTE) devices base by shipping its LYF-branded smartphones. Jio shipments are expected to grow in the coming quarters, owing to the launch of its 4G service offerings, the firm said.
4G-based smartphone shipments clocked 15.4 million units in the first quarter of 2016, which has grown more than six times over the same period last year, IDC said, adding that 4G-based device shipments accounted for 65.5 per cent of overall smartphone shipments in the period, driven primarily by Samsung’s J-series models.
“Qualcomm and Samsung are spearheading this growth while MediaTek, along with Chinese and Indian vendors, are driving the 4G volume in India. Adding to that, telecom players are playing a pivotal role in setting up the infrastructure and promoting 4G leading to wider awareness of this next gen technology in India,” Jaipal Singh, Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC said in a statement.
This comes even as overall smartphone shipments dropped in India for the second straight quarter.
Smartphone vendors shipped 23.5 million units of smartphones in the January-March quarter, up 5.2 per cent growth over the same period last year. However, it dropped 8.2 per cent from the fourth quarter of 2015.
Shipments of Indian vendors Micromax, Intex and Lava dropped 20.4 per cent sequentially as they struggled to push their inventories into the market, IDC said.
LeEco, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and Coolpad gained traction in the first quarter of the year with new product launches, it added.
More than 25 vendors are manufacturing smartphones locally in India. More than two-thirds of the smartphones shipped in the first quarter of 2016 were assembled in India.
Samsung led the overall Indian smartphone market with a share of 26.6 per cent, followed by Micromax and others.
Despite the slow start to the first quarter, IDC expects the smartphone market to gain momentum in the coming quarters.
“This year is expected to unfold many transitional phases in the mobile phone ecosystem as more vendors begin local assembling/manufacturing and an increasing trend for higher data consumption owing to affordable 4G devices and data plans,” said Navkendar Singh, senior research manager, IDC India.
