For close to three years running, Xiaomi has continuously beaten Samsung to the top of the Indian smartphone market. This has now changed as the latest market research report by Counterpoint Research shows that Samsung emerged as the number one brand in India for the months of July and August 2020.
Korean handset maker Samsung’s resurgence to capture the lucrative market it once controlled unchallenged could be traced to an aggressive online sales push, riding on the back of an anti-China sentiment that has rocked the Asian country in recent times, no thanks to the border dispute between New Delhi and Beijing.
Counterpoint Research data shows that in July, Samsung controlled a 24% share of the smartphone market and that figure was boosted to 25% in the month of August. On the other hand, Xiaomi’s share declined from 22% in July to 21% in August.
We must point out that this is the first time Samsung is edging out Xiaomi from the top spot since the Chinese innovative phone manufacturer took over the rein in 2018 as India’s top smartphone brand.
According to Prachir Singh, an analyst at Counterpoint (via), “Samsung has been quite aggressive on the online channel’s front. To compete with the increasing share of Chinese players like Xiaomi and Vivo in the mid-budget segment, Samsung came up with M-series which was launched as an online exclusive series”. “The series is doing quite well and helped Samsung in continuously gaining share in online channels,” he added.
We doubt if Samsung can hold on to this lead for long as the anti-China sentiments seem to have started waning as both countries try to douse tension through dialogue. However, Counterpoint predicts that Samsung will likely be among the Top 2 brand for the rest of the year.
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