India is experiencing unprecedented growth in smartphones sales as Indians bought 44 million or 4.4 crore smartphones in the year 2013. In the year 2012, total of 16.2 million smartphones were sold. These figures were revealed in a recent report by International Data Corporation (IDC) which monitors sale and purchase of various entities all over the globe.
The report said, “India was one of the fastest-growing countries worldwide in terms of smartphone adoption in 2013. This surge has been mainly powered by homegrown vendors, which have shown a tremendous and consistent growth over the past four quarters of 2013,”
This extreme surge in smartphone sale is powered by the introduction of affordable, sub-$100 smartphones by companies such as Micromax, Lava and Karbonn.
Overall, Samsung is still the champion when it comes to smartphone as it maintained it’s 38% market share, followed by Micromax (16%), Karbonn (10%), Sony (5%) and Lava (4.7%) in Q4 2013.
In the last quarter of 2013, total of 15.06 million smartphones were shipped by various vendors inside India, compared to just 5.35 million in the last quarter of 2012.
The report clearly states that the growth of smartphones will easily outpace the growth of featured mobile phones as lowering prices and excellent features is prompting first time buyers towards the magic of touch screen and applications.
Overall, 257 million or 25.7 crore mobile phones were sold in 2013, which is an increase of 18% compared to 2012 when 218 million mobiles were sold. Samsung sold the maximum number of mobiles in Q4 of 2013 with a market share of 19%, followed by Micromax (13%), Nokia (12%), Karbonn (10%) and Lava (6%).
Phablets, which are smartphones within the range of 5 inch and 6.99 inch accounted for more than 20% of the overall mobile sales in the Q4. Total of 67.83 million mobiles were sold in Q4, which is an increase of 16% compared to last year.
Worldwide, the most number of sub-$100 feature phones were sold in India as 212 million units were shipped by different vendors.
Android rules as far as smartphone OS is concerned, with 78.9% market share, followed by iOS at 14.9%, Windows at 3.9% and Blackberry at 1% market share.