India had a very successful second quarter in terms of smartphone shipments in the country. The volume of the shipment grew 15% as compared to Q2 in last year according to a report by CounterPoint Research.
Samsung again led the way with the strong output from their smartphones in every sector grabbing 22.8% of the total share. Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 edge, Galaxy J7 and Galaxy J2 were their most successful models in different categories.
Micromax maintained their second position as Intex took the third place with 10.3% market share. Lenovo took the fourth spot powered by their K-note series and Moto's Moto G4 sales. Moto G4 Plus 32 GB version was the most sold phone in the $150-200 category.
After grabbing the 5th spot in Q1 Reliance LYF maintained the position in Q2. Although they could have taken the 4th position. But according to the report, the delay in launching their LTE network has cost them a lot.
It is expected that Reliance will be launching the Jio 4G network commercially in a month or two. Right now they have partnered with Samsung to sell Jio cards. They already sell the SIM cards with three months of 4G data with LYF phones.
Another notable point from the report is that almost 70% of the smartphones shipped in Q2 are now locally sourced. That means that the regulations are working for "Make in India" project of the government.
Almost half of the phones shipped were smartphones. And as LTE smartphone market grew by 264% every 2 out of 3 smartphones had LTE support.
Android dominated the smartphone market as the operating system with 97% share. But the majority of the smartphone shipped were on either Android 4.0 KitKat or Android 5.1 Lollipop. This is very lackluster from the smartphone companies as we are almost nearing the release of Android 7.0 Nougat.
In February, India became the second largest market in the world in terms of smartphone shipment. And there are no signs of a slowdown as more consumers are buying smartphones every day.