Smartphone sales through online in Q2 2019: Xiaomi losing market share

Xiaomi, which had once taken the leadership in India smartphone market, where they were playing big time in the on-line selling, now Xiaomi is losing its thresh hold in the online smartphone market in India.

A report from Counterpoint Research highlights that, online smartphone shipments In India have been growing at a steady pace in spite of all hullaballoo by offline retailers. As compared to last year, the smartphone shipments online grew by a significant 26% in Q2 2019.

The biggest highlight, however, of the report is Xiaomi’s performance in the quarter. The leader of the overall India smartphone market, Xiaomi suffers a drop in its online smartphone shipment share. From 55% in Q2 2018, the Chinese smartphone OEM’s share dropped to 46% in Q2 2019. Considering the fact that Xiaomi hasn’t been performing that badly, this slump in market share can be attributed to a number of factors. Let us look at it in a little more detail.

Online Smartphone Market India: Rise In Competition

One of the main reasons behind the slump in the market share of Xiaomi was the aggressive marketing tactics employed by competitors. Such tactics have proven fruitful for companies like Samsung, Realme and Asus and resulted in the rise of their shipment share in Q2 2019.

The one capturing the eye the most among them has to be fellow Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme. From only 4% market share a year back, the company accounted for 17% online smartphone shipment share in Q2 2019.

Despite declined shipment share Xiaomi still owns about 46% of the online smartphone shipment market in India. The unparalleled performance of Xiaomi was driven by the immense popularity of Redmi Note 7 pro that helped the company to capture the lion’s share of the market. It was the most sought after model in Q2 2019, accounting for 12.1% share of the market. This was followed by another entry-level smartphone Redmi 6A, that captured 6.4% of the market. But more importantly, it was a smartphone from Xiaomi as well. These two models were closely followed by two Realme products, Realme C2 and Realme 3. They had a similar market share as that of Redmi 6A, at 5.9% and 5.6% respectively.

The trend clearly indicates that the growth of the online India smartphone market is still pegged to entry and mid-range devices. All five top-performing smartphones online, which collectively accounts for over one-third of online smartphone sales in India, fall in the sub-15k price category, a report from dazeinfo says.