Emerging brands will ship 25% of overall smartphone units this year, says CMR

As per a CMR report, emerging mobile handset vendors will be shipping 25% of the overall shipments, a total of 32.5 million smartphone units, by the end of this year. This number was 15.2 million smartphone units last year; it hints that the emerging brands have rapidly gained momentum in the rapidly increasing smartphone market in India.

By 'emerging,' the report referred to the brands launched in India not before 2013.

The report also said that these emerging brands contributed 16% towards the overall smartphone shipments in 2015, while in 2013, the contribution was merely 3%.

"The emerging brands do not remain confined only up to giving competition to the incumbents and offering a wide variety of options for prospective buyers to choose from. But these brands are also focusing on offering value for money products, so that buyers could get more and best of specifications at affordable price points," Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst Telecoms at CMR, told ET.

"Further these brands have been trend setters like - Xiaomi introducing the concept of flash sales, OnePlus going by invitation mode only and Oppo boldly focusing on the camera feature and calling its phone as the camera phone," he added.

The report added that Gionee and Oppo were the only two brands that had leadership positions in all segments of smartphone prices.

In 2015, the emerging brand market was led by Xiaomi (23.6%), while Gionee and Panasonic came second with 14.7% and 11.3% market shares, respectively.

The report added that India saw 21 new smartphone brands being launched in 2015, as compared to 74 brands launched in 2013. In the last two years, prominent brands that have come to India are Gionee, Oppo , InFocus, LYF, Qiku and Meizu.

Although the number of new entrants has fallen, their contribution has rapidly increased, said Krishna Mukherjee, Analyst Telecoms at CMR.

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