Market research agency IDC said Reliance Jio has replaced Lava as the fifth largest smartphone vendor in Q1 2016 with huge shipments of 4G devices.
Reliance Jio has started building the VoLTE devices base by shipping its LYF branded smartphones in the channels. Jio shipments are expected to grow in the coming quarters owing to launch of its 4G service offerings.
4G based smartphones shipments clocked 15.4 million units in Q1 2016, which has grown more than 6 times over the same period last year.
4G based device shipments accounted for 65.5 percent of overall smartphone shipments in Q1 2016 driven primarily by Samsung’s J-series models.
Samsung continues to lead the 4G smartphone market followed by Lenovo and Reliance Jio.
IDC said device makers shipped 23.5 million units of smartphones in India in Q1 2016 registering 5.2 percent growth over the same period last year. Smartphone shipments shrank 8.2 percent over Q4 2015, dipping consecutively for two quarters.
Shipments of Indian vendors Micromax, Intex and Lava dropped 20.4 percent sequentially as they struggled to push their inventories into the market.
LeEco, Oppo, Xiaomi, Vivo and Coolpad gained traction in the first quarter of the year with new product launches.
More than 25 Vendors are manufacturing smartphones locally in India. More than two-thirds of the smartphones shipped in Q1 2016 were assembled in India.
Qualcomm and Samsung are spearheading this growth while MediaTek along with Chinese and Indian vendors are driving the 4G volume in India.
Samsung has 26.6 percent share in the India smartphone market, despite shipments dipping both year-on-year and sequentially. Over 75 percent contribution came from Samsung J-series smartphones.
Micromax has achieved 6.9 percent growth over the same period last year and 17.9 percent dip sequentially.
Intex shipments sequentially declined 10 percent in Q1 2016 but grew marginally over last year. Intex’s 4G shipments almost doubled over the previous quarter strengthening its portfolio with over 15 active LTE models.
Lenovo including Motorola slipped to fourth position as the shipments declined 35.8 percent coming off from a sharp spike in the previous quarter.