70% Smartphone Users Switched Brands in Q2; Chinese Brands Lead

Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo led the list by selling the most number of replaced phones.

More than 70 percent of smartphone users in India switched brands in the second quarter of this year, according to CyberMedia Research’s (CMR) “Smartphone Movement” report on Wednesday.

The list is dominated by Chinese manufacturers, with Xiaomi, Vivo and Oppo topping the list of selling the most number of replaced phones:

• Xiaomi (37 percent)
• Oppo (16.3 percent)
• Itel (6.7 percent)
• Honor (4.5 percent)

The fastest depleting brands were:

• Micromax (41.2 percent)
• Intex (11.6 percent)
• HTC (5.5 percent)
• Karbonn (5.3 percent)
• Gionee (4.7 percent)

Kanika Jain, manager of New Initiatives of CMR, said that homegrown brands need to address the issue of customer stickiness as their paramount concern.

Consumers continue to swap their existing smartphones with new ones offered by Chinese brands; resulting in fast erosion of the total installed base of the local Indian brands.

Kanika Jain, Manager of New Initiatives, CMR 

Based on the analysis of over 200 million users across the country, the report further identified that the replacement market continues to grow in the country and in the second quarter of 2018, nearly 60 percent of the smartphones sold were actually upgrades or replacements of existing smartphones.

There is still 41 per cent of new smartphone market development occurring in the country, which could be a pie that the domestic brands should focus upon, the report suggested.