Lenovo Group, boosted by its acquisition of Motorola, has become the third biggest smartphone seller by shipments, overtaking homegrown Intex Technologies during the October to December quarter, when 25.6 million smartphones were shipped in the country, according to the latest quarterly data from International Data Corp (IDC).
While Samsung Electronics led the pack with 26.8% market share followed by Micromax Informatics’ 14.1% share, Lenovo, including Motorola, pipped Intex to gain the third position with a market share of 11.6% during the quarter, pushing the New Delhi-based company to the fourth position in terms of shipments, the data showed.
“4G-based smartphone shipments surpassed 3G volumes for the first time during the last quarter of the year, primarily led by Samsung and Lenovo, together accounting for more than half of 4G volumes,” Karthik J, senior market analyst, Client Devices at IDC, said.
For the current year through December 2016, IDC forecasts smartphone shipments to grow at double-digit rates and overtake the sales of feature phones. “Also, we expect 2016 to be a year of affordable 4G smartphones. By the end of 2016, we expect at least one in two smartphones shipped in India to be a 4G-enabled device,” IDC said.
IDC expects smartphone shipments to grow at double digit rates in CY 2016. The share of smartphones in the overall mobile phone market was around 40% in CY 2015 and given the current trend, smartphone sales would overtake feature phone sales in 2016. In 2015, smartphone shipments grew 28.8% to 103.6 million units, making India one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets in the Asia-Pacific, an IDC statement added.