Indian smartphone market still held by Chinese brands

Chinese smartphone brands continue to generate huge revenues in Indian market, which they dominate despite the Indian government’s move to set up additional barriers and make cross- border flow of goods even more difficult.

Chinese analysts said the situation showed that Indian consumers are voting with their wallets, despite government intervention and pressure from some local nationalist groups to ditch Chinese products for domestically made alternatives.

The Indian government raised the barriers against imports of goods from China after a deadly border clash in June.

Digital device makers are required by the Bureau of Indian Standards, the Indian quality control agency, to submit additional documents to get customs clearance.

However, Chinese brands continued to dominate the Indian market in the third quarter, with four Chinese brands accounting for 73 percent of all smartphones sold, according to a Canalys report released in November.

That figure was only 2.0 percentage points lower than in the second quarter.

Xiaomi led other brands with a 26- percent market share, trailed by South Korea’s Samsung, which accounted for 20 percent – the only non- Chinese brand among the top five vendors, Canalys said.

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, which generates most of its revenues outside the Chinese mainland market from sales in India and Europe, on Tuesday reported record high revenue from overseas markets of 39.8 billion yuan ($ 6.05 billion) in the third quarter, up 52.1 percent year- on- year.

“Regardless of changing geopolitics and external factors, we remain committed to bringing innovation to everyone,” a source close to Xiaomi told the Global Times on Wednesday.