Smartphone shipments in India continued to expand as global growth slowed, increasing 15 per cent year-on-year in Q2, with the $100-$150 segment growing 48 per cent.

According to Counterpoint, smartphones accounted for 44 per cent of total handset shipments in India during the quarter. LTE models, which grew 264 per cent in Q2, accounted for two-thirds of the smartphones shipped.

India brands represented nearly 70 per cent of the smartphone production volume in Q2.

Chinese brands (Lenovo, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and LeEco) saw their shipments grow 80 per cent during the quarter and captured almost a 27 per cent share of the smartphone market, Counterpoint said.

Samsung led with a 25.4 per cent share of the smartphone market during the quarter, while Micromax maintained second position (14.1 per cent) and Intex remained third (8.6 per cent).

Strong upside
Despite being one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the world, only one in five users in India owns a smartphone or is connected to the internet.

Pavel Naiya, an analyst at Counterpoint, attributed the low penetration to a lack of localisation and multi-lingual support in today’s mass-market phones.

Over the last 12 months domestic brands such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava have launched devices with deeper integration and customisation to support multiple native languages in an effort to rope in the next half a billion users who do not speak, read or write in English or Hindi as their first languages.

Android controls 97 per cent of the total OS smartphone shipment market in the country.

While MediaTek was the leading Q2 smartphone chipset supplier with a 32 per cent share, Qualcomm dominated the LTE-
based smartphone sub segment with 45 per cent share.