Samsung, Micromax and LYF are top three LTE device players: CMR

Samsung, Micromax and LYF are the top three LTE devices players in Q2 2016 with 40%, 9% and 8% market shares, respectively as per CMR report.

Samsung still rules the market with about 40 per cent market share, beating Lenovo, Micromax and LYF took the second and third positions with 9 per cent and 8 per cent market shares, respectively. However, as trends suggest post April 2016, shipments of LYF devices are witnessing a decline and it may not remain a leading brand in the coming quarters.

However, its share into tablets is likely to increase that would also give a fillip to Mi-Fi devices, where Jio is selling Huawei’s Mi-Fi devices.

As per the CMR’s Q2 report. over 18.2 million 4G devices were shipped in the second quarter of 2016 as against 15.4 million in the first quarter. Of these, 97.8 per cent were Smartphones followed by data cards at 1.6 per cent and tablet PCs at 0.6 per cent.

In the mobile phones, Samsung, Micromax and LYF are the three leaders with 41 per cent, 8.62 per cent and 8.54 per cent market shares, respectively. In tablets, Samsung held 40 per cent market share, Apple was at second position with 30.79 per cent market share and iBall was ranked number 3 with 8.3 per cent share.

In data cards, Samsung, ZTE, Micromax and iBall were the only players shipping 4G devices in Q2 of 2016. With the top three players holding 63 per cent, 20 per cent and 16 per cent markets share, respectively.

In the backdrop of declining LYF Smartphone shipments and Jio services going live, second tier brands like Vivo, Oppo, LeEco, Gionee, OnePlus, Asus and InFocus plan to double their shipments to meet the expected rise in demand.

Commenting on the findings, Faisal Kawoosa, principal analyst, Telecoms, CMR, said, “With services becoming live, it will be now more of a concern for operators, especially Jio (since it is a 4G only network) to actually see the ecosystem gets widened and encourage more and more handset players to come onboard and ramp up their shipments.”

"The biggest challenge for Jio would be to double the users actually having a 4G device in hand. We expect this year to end with around 125 million cumulative 4G devices and Jio would want this base to touch 250-300 million by 2017 end. Only then, it can expect some decent numbers (70-80 million) of subscribers on Jio services of this potential base by the end of 2017," added Faisal.

CMR Analyst for Telecoms, Krishna Mukherjee, said “4G LTE is here now to turnaround the tablets and data cards market as more and more players see this arena as the potential cash cows of the future.”