Amidst Growing #BoycottChina Chorus, Samsung Pips Xiaomi to Regain Top Spot in Indian Mobile Market

South Korean smartphone manufacturer Samsung has surpassed Xiaomi to regain its top spot in the overall handset market in India in the April-June period, according to a report by research firm International Data Corporation. Notably, Xiaomi's slip from the top spot, a position it firmly held for the last two years, is interesting given the dispute between India and China following the border skirmishes in the Galwan Valley. It is safe to assume that Xiaomi along with other Chinese companies may continue to face a bigger hurdle in the coming days.

In the overall phone market, which takes into account both the feature and smartphones, Samsung has a market share of 24 percent followed by Xiaomi and Vivo. While Samsung still trails in the Indian smartphone segment with 26.3 market share as opposed to Xiaomi's 29.4 percent, the former has indeed made a strong comeback as against 18.9 percent in the previous quarter, per IDC report. Samsung's Galaxy M21 smartphone India's top 5 shipped models in Q2 2020, the report further added. As far as Xiaomi and Vivo are concerned, the Chinese phone makers ended the quarter with 29.4 and 17.5 percent smartphone market shares respectively.

Coming to Xiaomi, the volume of the overall shipments by the Chinese smartphone maker fell by 48.7% to 5.4 million units in the second quarter. The report says that the company's Redmi Note 8A Dual, Note 8, Note 9 Pro, and Redmi 8 smartphone models accounted for a 21.8% market share.

Another Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme captured the fourth position with 1.78 million units in the Q2 2020, witnessing a sharp dip of 37 percent on year. Realme's affordable C3 and C2 devices accounted for 36 percent of its shipments, followed by its newly launched Narzo series smartphones. Oppo, on the other hand, took the fifth position, witnessing a 51 percent decline on year to 1.76 million units in the same quarter.

While IDC says that the smartphone sector is expected to show some signs of recovery in the second half of 2020, the Indian smartphone market registered a whopping decline of 50.6 percent in the second quarter of 2020 to 18.2 million units, down from 36.8 million units in 2019.