Q2 2020 has been recorded to be one of the worst periods for the Indian smartphone market as it saw a decline of 48% YoY, shipping a little over 17 million units. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the economy to shut down, leading to both a drop in manufacturing and demand for smartphones in the country. The top 5 companies for Q2 2020 were Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, OPPO and realme.
The smartphone industry in India is largely driven by Chinese smartphone manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo and OPPO. These companies faced a very difficult quarter as local production was halted and even after production started, companies were not able to keep up with the sudden increase in demand. The India-China border issue further worsened the situation as anti-china sentiments grew across the country.
Despite all of this, Chinese companies took 4 of the top 5 spots in smartphones sales. Xiaomi remained the leader with 31% of overall market share, shipping 5.3 million smartphone units. Vivo took second place, shipping 3.7 million units and Samsung took third place after shipping 2.9 million smartphones.
OPPO edged out realme for this quarter, shipping 2.2 million units, whereas realme shipped only 1.7 million units. Interestingly, Apple recorded the lowest decline of 20% YoY among all smartphone companies in India, shipping 2,50,000 units.
Commenting on the report, Madhumita Chaudhary, Canalys Analyst said:
It’s been a rocky road to recovery for the smartphone market in India. While vendors witnessed a crest in sales as soon as markets opened, production facilities struggled with staffing shortages on top of new regulations around manufacturing, resulting in lower production output. The fluidity of the lockdown situation across India has had a deep-rooted effect on vendors’ go-to-market strategies. Xiaomi and Vivo have undertaken an O2O (offline-to-online) strategy to support their massive offline network. Online channels, too, while seeing a positive effect of the pandemic on market share, have seen sales decline considerably.