Among e-commerce platforms, Flipkart leads the market with 54% share, Mi.com climbed to 14% share while Amazon dominated the premium smartphone segment with 77% market share, thanks to OnePlus.

   New Delhi, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Beijing, San Diego, Buenos Aires –

 June 15th, 2018

According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service, E-commerce channels captured a record 38% share of the total smartphone channels during Q1 2018, driven by exclusive online launches and strong promotions during the latter part of the quarter.

Commenting on the research findings, Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research said, “The E-commerce segment grew faster than the offline segment during Q1 2018. While the smartphone shipments in offline segment declined by 3%, online segment grew by 4% YoY. This is driven by the increase in the number of models launching on online platforms coupled with aggressive offers. Additionally, smartphone brands have now adopted a multichannel strategy instead of relying on a single channel for distribution of their products and this has increased the competition over the past few quarters.”

Commenting on the competitive landscape, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research said, “India still has one of the lowest percentage of users who are connected to the Internet and shop online. This trend is changing rapidly as 4G data consumption has increased and more users beyond metro cities are geared up to browse and shop online. Hence, in an effort to target first time shoppers, both Flipkart and Amazon have scaled up their operations in recent quarters, especially in the smartphone segment which is a major value driving category for these platforms.”

Exhibit 1: India Online Smartphone Shipment Market Share by Platforms Q1 2018

Source: Counterpoint Research Market Monitor Q1 2018

Market Summary:

• The online smartphone segment in India increased 4% YoY as the smartphone market remained flat YoY in Q1 2018. Exclusive smartphones from Xiaomi and Huawei (Honor) majorly drove online shipments.
• Flipkart continues its dominance in the online smartphone market with 54% share while Amazon holds second place with 30% followed by Mi.com with 14%.
• Close to 30 exclusive smartphone models were launched in Q1 2018. Attractive full-screen displays, high capacity batteries and AI features like face recognition were key differentiators for new launches.
• Xiaomi led online platforms with a share of 57% during Q1 2018, followed by Samsung (14%) and Huawei (Honor) (8%).
• Entry level and premium are the fastest growing segments in the online smartphone market. Entry level shipments were driven by Xiaomi while premium was driven by OnePlus.
• Top five smartphones contributed to close to half of the smartphone shipments through online channels.
• Huawei Honor 9 Lite was the only model in top 5 slowing down Xiaomi’s full dominance.

Exhibit 2: India Online Best-Selling Smartphones Share Q1 2018

Source: Counterpoint Research Market Monitor Q1 2018

The comprehensive and in-depth Q1 2018 Market Monitor is available for subscribing clients. Please feel free to contact us at [email protected] for further questions regarding our in-depth latest research, insights or press enquiries.

The Market Monitor research is based on sell-in (shipments) estimates based on vendor’s IR results, vendor polling triangulated with sell-through (sales), supply chain checks and secondary research.

Analyst Contacts:

Tarun Pathak
+91 9971213665
[email protected]

Karn Chauhan
+91 9816455600
[email protected]

Shobhit Srivastava
+91 9000831117
[email protected]

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