With Q4 2014 smartphone sales reports coming out in a heap, there has been a confusion created by a report suggesting that Micromax has dislodged Samsung from the top in India and then Samsung dismissing the report on the basis of a new survey. Seems that the confusion won’t be over anytime soon with a new study from Counterpoint claiming that Samsung is still on top in India, and that the figures of the Canalys report are too far away from truth.
(Also Read : Samsung dismisses Canalys report, claims to be the leading vendor in India )
The Counterpoint Research numbers are completely different from Canalys’ report. While the difference in sales figures of Samsung and Micromax is expected, this new report shows that Intex, Lava and Lenovo complete the top five companies in India in the October-December quarter, whereas Canalys says that Micromax, Samsung, Karbonn and Lava are the top four companies. According to them, Samsung leads India’s smartphone market with a 27.4 percent market share, Micromax is nearly 7.9 percentage points behind at 19.5. Intex is number three according to the survey with a 6.5 percent share, followed by Lava with 5.1 percent and Lenovo at number 5, thanks to the Motorola acquisition.
The only thing in which these surveys came close was the overall shipments, Counterpoint reported that it was nearly 22 million and Canalys reported that the figure was 21.6 million.
According to the latest study, Samsung led the overall mobile phone and smartphone market during Q4 with a market share of 16.1 percent and 27.4 percent respectively. Intex entered the top 5 smartphone vendor rankings for the first time in a quarter.
Also Motorola crossed 3 million shipments in 2014. While Xiaomi smartphone shipments grew almost 250 percent quarter-on-quarter, it failed to break into the top five, shipping a total of 1 million smartphones. It also shows a record in Apple’ iPhone shipment, a number rarely mentioned in any mobile report in India. According to the numbers, Apple saw shipments in India touch half a million units for the first time in a quarter with strong demand for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
Interestingly, all the three studies – Canalys, Counterpoint and GfK, based on which Samsung dismissed Canalys report, contradicts each other. So, take all these reports with a pinch of salt.
Another interesting thing is, Counterpoint had carried out a survey last year reporting a downfall for Samsung in India, and also placed Micromax ahead of Samsung in overall market, which Samsung had then disagreed. Seems like they won’t disagree this time around!
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Sameer