• Top three smartphone brands captured 57% of the India festive sales volumes dominated by Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme.
• Xiaomi dominated the festive season with record performance widening gap with rivals.
• Realme registered a record performance for any new brand ever in India, becoming the second largest brand across the eCommerce channels

New Delhi, Hong Kong, Seoul, London, Beijing, San Diego, Buenos Aires –November 28^th, 2018

According to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Pulse service, smartphone sales for the Indian Diwali festive season (Oct 9^th – Nov 8^th, 2018) grew a healthy 26% YoY compared to similar period last year (Sep 19^th – Oct 18^th, 2017). This was mainly driven by the leading two e-commerce platforms - Flipkart and Amazon’s series of online sale events like “Flipkart Big Billion Day” and “Amazon Great Indian Festival”. and OEM promotions (Mi.com) which offered huge discounts, No-cost EMI on debit and credit card on top smartphones and other attractive offers.

Commenting on the market performance, Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst stated, “The overall India festive season smartphone sales registered highest ever growth of 26% YoY in 2018. However, the online sale events which continued for weeks running up to Diwali helped these online platforms register a massive 46% YoY growth in sales volumes and contributed to half of the overall sales. This was mainly due to greater number of attractive exclusive smartphones as compared to the last year on these platforms, backed up with offers and lucrative deals. Flipkart stood out due to the most number of exclusives while Amazon benefitted some from the launch of OnePlus 6T.”

Source: Counterpoint Research Market Pulse Nov 2018

Commenting on the brands which registered most of the growth and remained popular, Tarun Pathak, Associate Director stated, “The top three smartphone brands, Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme captured 57% of the overall Diwali festive season smartphone sales. Xiaomi sold the most number of smartphones during this period thanks to strong performance in online channels. Xiaomi widened the gap with Samsung which still did relatively well in offline channels capturing 30% share. The newly launched online only smartphone brand, Realme had a record festive performance for any new brand ever in India. Realme immediately captured 9% share jumping to the third spot in overall sales volume performance and also became the second largest in online segment with 18% share. Huawei also had a strong performance in online segment while vivo performed exceedingly well in offline channels.”

Counterpoint’s Senior Analyst, Hanish Bhatia sharing his insights, “Emerging brands such as OnePlus, Pocophone, Asus and HMD Nokia also registered strong uptake during the festive season due to the new launches ahead of the festive sale period. Meanwhile, Apple’s new iPhones had a relatively lukewarm response for its new and older iPhone models compared to the rest of the brands.”

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Analyst Contacts:

Tarun Pathak
+91 9971213665
[email protected]

Karn Chauhan

+91 9816455600
[email protected]

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