Bangalore, August 19, 2014 :  The smartphone market in India has maintained its growth  with shipments touching year-on-year growth of 84% in Q2 2014 and a quarterly growth of 11%, says IDC. The potential for growth in the smartphone market is quite high as 71% of the market continues to be on feature phones.
The overall India mobile phone market stood at 63.21 million units in Q2 2014 i.e. a 5% quarter on quarter growth against Q1 2014. The growth can be attributed to both the product categories i.e. smartphones and feature phones from Q1 2014 to Q2 2014.  Back to back volume growth in the smartphone market are being noted due to the re-defined low price models in smartphones and continuous migration from feature phones to smartphones.
Vendors shipped a total of 18.42 million Smartphones in Q2 2014 compared to 10.02 million in the same period of 2013. The sub $200 category of the smartphone market is increasing in terms of the shipment share as the contribution from this category stood at 81% in Q2 2014. With the influx of Chinese vendors and Mozilla’s plans to enter the smartphone category at $50 level, the low end segment of the smartphone market will become crucial in the coming quarters.
The Shipment contribution of “Phablets” (5.5 inch - 6.99 inch screen size Smartphone) in Q2 2014 was noted to be 5.4% of the overall Smartphone segment. Phablet category grew by 20% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) in terms of sheer volume. More than half of the Phablets shipped are under $250 price band and Indian vendors are dominant in the noted price segment.
Jaideep Mehta, Vice President and General Manager - South Asia, IDC says, “While Samsung has held on to its leadership position in the market, it is noteworthy that Micromax is growing faster. Samsung needs to continue to address the low-end of the market aggressively, and also needs a blockbuster product at the high end to regain momentum. Given the current growth rates, there is a real possibility of seeing vendor positions change in the remaining quarters this year.”