Samsung narrowly beats Xiaomi for another quarterly victory in key Indian smartphone market،
Whether they succeed in India or not, almost all of the world’s major smartphone vendors clearly care about their performance and progress (or lack thereof) in the world’s most populous country. This is obviously due to the large number of potential mobile device buyers, but also to the incredible resilience of the Indian smartphone market, which was showing promising signs of growth while shipments were declining almost everywhere else.
Unfortunately, those days are gone and like the global industry, smartphone sales are also falling in India. But the huge regional market is moving towards a “gradual recovery”, at least
according to a new Canalys report This puts the third quarter 2023 local shipment total about 3% below the third quarter 2022 score.
Samsung against the others
We’re talking about 43 million units moved across the country between July and September of this year, with the largest portion technically coming from the “other” category of the latest supplier table. Of course, it’s not fair to compare individual brands with a group that includes everyone from Motorola to OnePlus, Infinix, Tecno and even Apple, which is why the Indian crown goes to
Samsung. . once again.
The world’s number one smartphone vendor is at the top of the heap in India with a fairly narrow advantage over silver and bronze medalists Xiaomi and Vivo respectively, having more or less done the same in Q1 and Q2 2023 .
But it was actually Xiaomi that won this title in the third quarter of 2022, and compared to this period, Samsung only lost 3% of its regional shipments while the former champion lost no less than 17%.
It turns out that 17 percent is Vivo’s exact market share in third place, which is also a very positive result considering that Samsung and Xiaomi each have only 18 percent share of the pie and the medalist of China-based Indian bronze has somehow managed to retain its market share. sales figures in the region are unchanged from the third quarter of last year.
In fourth and fifth place, Realme and especially Oppo suffered fairly significant declines in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the same period of 2022, which further underlines the strong performance of several brands in the “other” division, including OnePlus and Motorola .
Wait, where is Apple?
Although Canalys is not yet ready to release detailed results for the Indian premium
smartphone market segment for this latest quarter, Samsung is virtually guaranteed to top this specific ranking as well, thanks in large part to strong demand. generated by the Galaxy S23 family.
Apple will likely be happy with its latest premium quarterly sales figures in the region, despite launching the all-new iPhone 15
series after this period ends. “Older generation” iPhones, such as members of the iPhone 14 and even iPhone 13 family, have continued to prove popular in India, especially at “attractive” prices during the recent “festive sales”.
Looking at the last three months of the year, we should probably point out that Samsung also managed to beat its local competitors in Q4 2022, which is exactly how we expect things to play out in the end of 2023. Apple, meanwhile, will continue to dominate the country’s “ultra-premium” segment, although we could certainly see the Cupertino-based tech giant become the top spot for premium shipping if the iPhone15 the range is proving more successful in India than in China.
Interestingly, companies like Oppo are also starting to focus more on the country’s premium segment, looking to prioritize profits and profit margins over volumes. Of course, you can always have the best of both worlds too… if your name is Samsung and your high-end Galaxy S and mid-range Galaxy A are selling like hot cakes.
