Counterpoint Research – the independent market research and consulting firm says that India has the second largest smartphone market in the world. With entry of e-commerce platforms like Flipkart, Snapdeal, Amazon, PayTM etc, the country has reduced the barriers for new entrants through their ‘direct-to-consumer’ policy, which sells mobile phones without involvement of any middleman.
Of all the e-commerce portals, Flipkart is the most preferred site of the consumers for buying smartphone online, with the company accounting for almost half of the online sales, as reported by Counterpoint Research.
Flipkart had a 47.5 per cent share and its competitors, Snapdeal and Amazon have followed with market shares of 22.3 per cent and 21.5 per cent respectively. The three leading players have contributed to 91 per cent of online smartphone sales.
Last year, India has sold around 10 crore smartphone through the e-commerce channels which has accounted for one-third of the total sales. Smartphones accounted for 40 per cent of all other phones which were sold in the country by 2015.
Lenovo used to be the largest seller online, leading at 25 per cent of all online smartphone sales. Samsung was next with 18 per cent market share. Motorola was the first company to launch Android smartphones exclusively on Flipkart. Xiaomi, also had an online only model, when it was launched in India and had a market share of 9 per cent. Micromax, India’s largest smartphone brand contributed to 16 per cent of the overall online sales.
