India Overtakes US to Become the World’s Second-Largest Smartphone Market

With China on the first spot, India just became the world’s second largest smartphone market after overtaking the US in terms of smartphone sales.

Canalys’s – a market research company – revealed that India shipped 40 million smartphones in the third quarter of 2017 – this number is 23% higher than the third quarter of the previous year. This drastic increase in sales boosted India’s position as it shot past USA.

Back in 2011, China attained its first position pushing behind the US and became the world’s largest smartphone market. Rysgavg Doshi, a researcher in Canalys, highlighted that increased network coverage, which allowed more people to access faster 4G internet, has pushed smartphone demand in India.

It should be noted that India is the second most populous country in the world housing 1.3 billion people. As smartphones get popular and widely used, India is expected to have around 300 million smartphone users by the year-end.

Canalys Research Analyst Ishan Dutt said,

This growth comes as a relief to the smartphone industry. Doubts about India’s market potential are clearly dispelled by this result. There are close to 100 mobile device brands sold in India, with more vendors arriving every quarter.
In addition, India has one of the most complex channel landscapes, but with low barriers to entry. Growth will continue. Low smartphone penetration and the explosion of LTE are the main drivers.

Unsurprisingly, Samsung and Xiaomi hold the top spot in smartphone sales. Xiaomi gained a lot of popularity and is now neck-to-neck with Samsung due to their budget-friendly and premium devices. Xiaomi sold 9.2 million units as compared to Samsung’s sales of 9.4 million.

Moreover, Samsung, Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo and Lenovo lead the market and these brands account for 75% of total smartphone shipments in India.

via Canalys