The country’s smartphone shipments fell 6% year-on-year to 151.6 million units in 2022, owing to factors like supply chain issues and low demand caused by global macroeconomic headwinds. In the October-December quarter, the country’s shipments witnessed their first-ever decline, falling by 27% y-o-y to 32.4 million units, according to a report by market analyst firm Canalys.
Also Read: 5G penetration, smaller towns to drive smartphone adoption in 2023, says Amazon India
“India was better positioned to weather the global downturn than other markets. But domestic consumer spending cooled in the last few months of 2022,” said Sanyam Chaurasia, analyst at Canalys. “Even during the festive season, the domestic market suffered a fall in transactions, retail spending and electronic imports,” he added. For this year, the market analyst firm expects a moderate growth in the Indian smartphone market that will be driven by 5G devices, state government deals, smartphone penetration, and the introduction of new use cases.
Other factors like availability of up-to-date technology with customers and lower upgrades also contributed to fall in shipments in 2022.
For the full year, Xiaomi sold 29.6 million smartphone units with a market share of 20%, the highest among its peers, followed by Samsung that sold 28.6 million units with a market share of 19%. Vivo and Oppo sold 25.4 million and 22.6 million units, respectively. Vivo’s market share for 2022 was at 17% whereas Oppo’s market share was at 15%. Oppo includes OnePlus.
However, in the October-December quarter, Samsung bagged the first position for the first time since July-September in 2017, shipping 6.7 million units for a market share of 21%. Vivo was at second spot with the shipment of 6.4 million units, mainly via offline channels. After 20 quarters, Xiaomi lost its leadership position in October-December and fell to third place with shipments of 5.5 million units.
Also Read: Samsung’s PLI bill stuck as govt differs on claim
“Vendors that were focused predominantly on online channels suffered from a poor ecommerce festive sales performance in Q4 2022,” Chaurasia said. Due to poor e-commerce festive sales performance last year, Xiaomi and Realme saw significant stockpiling of their products in online channels during the quarter.
Vivo’s and Oppo’s focus on offline channels helped them to be the only vendors to report growth in shipments. Samsung continued to target consumers across segments with strong retail channel strength. “In 2024, India is set to hold its general election and the government’s strategy will be to boost consumers’ purchasing power, even if inflation remains high,” Chaurasia said.
