There is good news for Indian 4G operators. Counterpoint Research says almost 7 out of every 10 smartphones shipped in India was LTE capable and 8 out of every 10 LTE capable smartphones were VoLTE ready in Q3 2016.
The beneficiary from this development will be 4G operators such as Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone, Reliance Communications, Telenor and BSNL.
“Out of all the smartphones being sold, almost seventy percent of them are now LTE capable with eighty percent of those LTE smartphones sporting VoLTE (Voice over LTE) capabilities signaling a significant polarization among the Indian demographics,” said Counterpoint Research.
Globally, more than 300 million (+280 percent) LTE-capable smartphones were shipped in the third quarter of 2016.
VoLTE is becoming a key feature from marketing perspective for OEMs and carriers. Reliance Jio is actively pushing for the growth of VoLTE phones in India. In September, Reliance Jio said it sold 16 million 4G SIMs – free of cost — across India.
Smartphone shipments in India grew 23 percent in Q3 2016 against global smartphone market growth of 5 percent.
“The demand for smartphones is being fueled by growing importance of being uber-connected which is further catalyzed by rollout of LTE networks,” said Karn Chauhan, research analyst at Counterpoint Research.
Samsung dominates the feature phone and smartphone market but its overall market share declined sequentially by 4 percentage points even though it registered a record quarter in shipment volumes in India.
Micromax maintained the second spot in smartphone space though closely followed by Lenovo. In featurephone segment Micromax was surpassed by Lava which became number one among local brands in featurephone segment.
Intex slipped to fourth spot in mobile phone market and in smartphone segment. Intex was surpassed by LYF and Xiaomi, thus being pushed out of the top five rankings.
Lava was the fastest growing Indian brand during the third quarter with a growth of 8 percent. Lava became the number three mobile phone brand and number one feature phone brand in India for the very first time.
Reliance Jio’s LYF brand climbed up to number four spot benefitting from the commercial launch and attractive trial period offer to consumers.
Xiaomi entered in the top five smartphone rankings due to demand for its Redmi Note 3 device which was the second most best-selling smartphone during the quarter.
Oppo and Vivo saw their shipments grow 272 percent and 437 percent respectively during Q3 2016.
Baburajan K
editor@telecomlead.com
