Smartphone shipments in India fell 48 per cent in the second quarter this year to just 17.3 million units, as the country faced an unprecedented lockdown owing to the Covid-19 pandemic. Xiaomi led the second quarter with 31 per cent overall market share, shipping 5.3 million smartphone units.
Vivo maintained the second position, shipping 3.7 million units, and grew its market share to 21.3 per cent from 19.9 per cent in Q1, according to market research firm Canalys. Samsung was third, with 2.9 million smartphones shipped. The South Korean company and also saw exports impacted as its largest manufacturing plant outside of Vietnam shut down for most of Q2.
Oppo edged out Realme to take the fourth position as it shipped 2.2 million units, compared to Realme's 1.7 million. "It's been a rocky road to recovery for the smartphone market in India," said Canalys Analyst Madhumita Chaudhary.
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.
"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," she said in a statement on Friday.
Apple was the least impacted among the top 10 vendors as shipments fell just 20 per cent (year-on-year) to just over 250,000 in Q2. Apple announced its plans to diversify its supply chain and is pushing its major partners Foxconn and Wistron to increase its investments in India.
Smartphone vendors in the June quarter faced a diabolical situation, dealing with both low supply due to a complete halt in production and diminished demand, as online and offline retailers were prohibited from selling smartphones.
As local production suffered through the early stages of Q2, vendors like Xiaomi and Oppo imported smartphones to meet pent-up demand, said the report.
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