This was on cards – sooner or later this was bound to happen. But, it has happened much faster than most of us would have expected. According, to leading analytics firm IDC, More 4G smartphones were sold in October than 3G enabled ones.
At the start of the year, and IDC report had mentioned that 4G smartphone market share in India was in lower single digits, but as soon as 4G rollouts started from telecom operators (around June of this year), the demand for 4G handsets has skyrocketed, and now it has reached a level where it has out-paced over 3G enabled ones.
Kiran Kumar, Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India said, “With 25.9 per cent month-on-month growth, 4G based smartphone accounted for more than half of smartphones shipped in October, ”. He added, “This gain is mainly at the expense of 3G enabled handsets as vendors are replacing their existing models with 4G based smartphones while making consumers future proof”
Expectedly, with 4G becoming the flavour of the season, 2G handsets are literally out of picture – so much so that manufacturers like Samsung, Micromax and Intex have already announced their exit from 2G handset manufacturing. While other vendors have not announced it officially, it makes little sense for anyone to manufacture 2G only handsets anymore.
While 2G is out of picture, it seems 3G only handsets are also at a risk of becoming extinct very soon.
With operators like Reliance Jio on verge of launching their 4G services, it makes little sense for manufacturers to launch 3G handsets. Consumers obviously want to future proof their purchases and with most operators having already launched or in process of launching their 4G services, the 4G smartphone demand is only going to go north from here.
Smartphone Growth
At the start of this year, feature phones still accounted for about 65 percent market share in India – however, throughout this year, consistently, Smartphones have been outpacing feature phone sales. Infact, according to IDC by 2016, smartphone market share will be more than feature phones. And according to Cisco, by 2016, India will be second largest Smartphone market in the world and in next 3 years, India will have 631 million smartphones.