India’s online smartphone sales grew by 23 per cent in calendar year 2017, faster than the global average with Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi dominating online sales with a 44 per cent share followed by Lenovo and Samsung at 18 and 15 per cent respectively. Among online shopping portals, Flipkart was the most favored platform for smartphones accounting for 51 per cent of the sales followed by Amazon at 33 per cent, according to research firm Counterpoint Research.
Online smartphone sales accounted for nearly a third of overall smartphone sales in the country, which is among the highest in the world. Nearly 100 smartphone brands were launched exclusively through online platforms during the year.
Counterpoint however, believes growth in online sales will be flat this year as manufacturers including Xiaomi reduce their dependence on online flash sales and adopt a more hybrid model–a mix of online and offline sales.
“The high-spec but low-cost, value for money smartphone models exclusively available only on online platforms were instrumental in successfully creating unprecedented demand throughout the year. The demand for such models was felt not only in online but offline channels as well due to walk-in customers asking for attractive models such as the Redmi Note 4,” said  Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research. “This has sparked an obvious channel extension strategy move to expand offline and capture the pent-up demand which is helping vendors such as Xiaomi which are able to offer such attractive models. In 2018, many brands will learn from Xiaomi’s growth from online to offline and will try to replicate a similar strategy.”
Hitherto a non entity till a couple of years back, Xiaomi has posted strong growth over the last six quarters in India exploiting stagnant sales of long time market leader Samsung. In the last quarter of 2017, it overtook Samsung to become the largest selling smartphone brand in the country. Overall for 2017, it still trails Samsung’s 24 per cent share to 19 per cent of its own. Its growth can be understood by its market share which has climbed from just 6 per cent in 2016. In contrast, Samsung has lost 1 percentage point during the year.
“The competitive landscape has changed significantly in the last year, with the rise of brands such as Xiaomi, OPPO, VIVO in the smartphone segment.” said Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research. “During the second half, players such as Xiaomi was particularly disruptive with an aggressively-priced, broad portfolio taken to market with an effective channel expansion strategy. This helped Xiaomi to surpass the long-time market leader, Samsung, for the first time ever. This performance ended Samsung’s six year market dominance.”
