Indian smartphone market grows by 44%, Samsung leads the pack

The International Data Corporation (IDC) data revealed that the Indian smartphone market grew by 44% in the second quarter ended June. Samsung took the lead with 23% share and Micromax was quite close.

The IDC data read that Chinese vendors like Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei and Gionee made significant inroads into the Indian market and their shipments tripled.

Total 26.5 million smartphones were shipped to India in the April-June period and smartphone shipments grew 19%, pushed by vendors using online retail to penetrate the market.

The research body expects that by 2017, India may overtake the US to be the second largest smartphone market globally.

Meanwhile, Chinese smartphone players accounted for 12% of the total Indian smartphone market in the second quarter, double from a year ago.

"As China started to slowdown, most vendors from the country have targeted India as the next big growth market for smartphones. The key to success of Chinese vendors has been popular flash sales through online players such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. At the same time, they also focused on bringing more 4G phones at affordable $100-150 price points which is left unattended by Indian and global vendors," said research manager with IDC's Asia/Pacific mobile phone team, Kiranjeet Kaur.

Micromax secured 17% smartphone market in a strong second quarter, while Intex captured the number 3 spot with 11% share.