Chinese brands take 4 places out of top 5 mobile brands in India

Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Lenovo are among the top five mobile brands in India, but Samsung continues to rule India’s smartphone shipments with a 25 percent market share, according to new figures from market research company Canalys.

“With China suffering its own decline this quarter, India is a market of huge strategic importance to Chinese smartphone vendors,” said Canalys Research Analyst Ishan Dutt. “Samsung is under immense pressure in the mid-tier from the Chinese players.”

Over 50 percent of India’s smartphone brands is currently controlled by Chinese brands, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Shenzhen-based Gionee, and Lenovo.

Screenshot from Canalys.

The biggest winner of this year’s Q2 is Xiaomi which has more than quadrupled its shipments to 4.8 million units making it India’s largest smartphone brand after Samsung. This month, Xiaomi celebrated its third Mi anniversary in India. Sales of Xiaomi’s Redmi series have been growing strong despite a viral video showing one of Xiaomi’s phones catching fire. The incident, however, seems to be fake.

Thanks to its popularity among tier-two and tier-three cities, Vivo placed third in this quarter shipping a record 3.4 million units. Unfortunately, the company’s reputation came under scrutiny after a protest from former workers turned violent on Tuesday. According to media reports, as a part of its efforts to boost its brand by sponsoring the Indian Premier League Vivo hired a number of workers during the season and has now begun laying them off. In the case of Tuesday’s protests, the workers were fired with no prior notice.

Oppo, which is like Vivo owned by Guangzhou-based BBK Electronics, came fourth, closely followed by Lenovo with 1.9 million units shipped in the second quarter.

One brand that was notably missing from the report is Huawei which is lagging behind its compatriots in conquering the Indian market. Huawei sold only 1 million units during the last fiscal year ending on March 31st. The second largest Android smartphone manufacturer in the world hopes to bolster its success in this core market during 2017.

The research also warned that India’s smartphone market has contracted for the first time in history this Q2 causing shipments to the country to fall 4% year on year to just under 27 million units. A portion of the blame goes to India’s new Goods and Services Tax, the report said.