Samsung, Micromax and Apple are leading the Indian smartphone market in the first quarter of 2013, said Strategy Analytics.
Strategy Analytics on Thursday said India overtook Japan to become the world’s third largest smartphone market by volume for the first time ever in Q1 2013.
10.0 million smartphones were shipped in India during the first quarter of 2013, almost tripling from 3.8 million units a year earlier.
China and the United States are the other leading smartphone markets.
Neil Shah, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, said: “India is growing four times faster than the global average.”
Worldwide smartphone shipments expanded 39 percent year-over-year, compared with 163 percent y-o-y across India, during Q1 2013.
The Indian smartphone market is rising quicker than China (86 percent), Japan (24 percent), the US (19 percent) and almost all other major countries.
India is a low-penetration, high-growth telecom market that no smartphone vendor, component maker or apps developer can afford to ignore.
Strategy Analytics estimates that Micromax, Karbonn and Spice are growing between 200 and 500 percent on an annual basis.
IDC recently said Samsung, Nokia, Micromax, Karbonn and Lava are the top 5 phone makers in India. The Indian mobile phone market grew around 24 percent year-on-year, primarily driven by the surge in smartphone shipments. The smartphone market grew 74 percent in Q1 of 2013 over Q1 of 2012. The share of smartphones in overall revenue of the phone market in India is close to 46 percent for Q1 of 2013 despite contributing only 10 percent to the volume/units.
