Xiaomi leads Indian smartphone market in Q4 2017, Samsung at no. 2: IDC

Xiaomi surpassed Samsung to grab the top spot in the Indian smartphone market in Q4, 2017, according to the latest report by research firm IDC.

This is the third report that has rated Xiaomi ahead of Samsung in the fourth quarter. Earlier, research firms Canalys and Counterpoint claimed that Xiaomi had toppled Samsung to become top smartphone vendor in India. According to Canalys, Xiaomi shipped 8.2 million smartphones in India during Q4 2017, while Samsung shipped 7.3 million units. Counterpoint puts Xiaomi's market share at 25% in Q4 2017, and Samsung's at 23%.

Samsung, however, did not agree with the results and said that it is still the country's number 1 smartphone brand. Citing a report by Gfk, Samsung had a 45% value market share and 40% volume market share in Q4 2017. It is worth noting that IDC, Canalys and Counterpoint use the shipment data as the metric for performance.

Coming back to the IDC data, Xiaomi took the top spot with 26.8% market, a little over Samsung's 24.2%. Vivo, Lenovo, and Oppo remained in the same positions with 6.5%, 5.6%, and 4.9% market shares respectively.

IDC describes Xiaomi's lead as one of the highlights in the last quarter of 2017. It also attributes the Chinese company's aggressive pricing as the reason behind its growth. "Xiaomi's offline expansion and higher marketing spends were other key factors for the vendor's high shipments in the seasonally low quarter", IDC said.

Overall mobile phone market

Overall, 124 million units of smartphones were shipped in the previous year which resulted in a 14% annual growth. Samsung remained the leader in the Indian smartphone market with 24.7% share. The rest four positions are taken by Chinese players continuing its influence and popularity in India. Xiaomi isn't far behind with 20.9% market share, while Vivo follows with 9.7%, Lenovo with 7.8% and Oppo with 7.5%.

Another highlight was India being the biggest feature phone market globally. Propelled by the sales of Reliance JioPhone, India continues being the biggest feature phone market in India with 164 million units shipped during the said year.

A similar trend occurred in the feature phone market with Samsung losing its top spot to Reliance Industries in Q4 2017. With 24.1% market share, Reliance Industries took over Samsung's 14.5% market share in Q4 2017. Samsung still led overall with 20.5% market share, and Reliance Industries in the fourth position with 8.3%.