Xiaomi becomes India's Apple

New Delhi: Xiaomi has once again topped the Indian smartphone market, with two global market research firms on Tuesday reporting an over 31 per cent market share for the Chinese smartphone maker -- a whopping 155 per cent annual shipment growth -- in the first quarter of 2018.

According to Hong Kong-based Counterpoint Research, Xiaomi led the Indian smartphone market with 31.1 per cent market share while Singapore-based Canalys said the company shipped over nine million units, giving it a market share of just over 31 per cent -- the highest ever for a vendor since Q1 2014 when Samsung had a 33 per cent share.

Samsung, with a 26.2 per cent share, was second, followed by Vivo at 5.8 per cent share in the smartphone segment, said Counterpoint.

Canalys, however, said Samsung with 25 per cent market share shipped just under 7.5 million smartphones -- growing by 24 per cent on last year. Oppo took third place with 2.8 million shipments, and Vivo fourth with 2.1 million shipments.

Xiaomi was the leader with 25 per cent market share in Q4 of 2017.

Xiaomi's recently launched Redmi 5, Redmi 5A and Redmi Note 5 have seen runaway success, with the Redmi 5A reaching record sales of 3.5 million in the first quarter.

In comparison, Samsung's best-selling device, the "J7 Nxt", shipped 1.5 million units, said Canalys.

This is the first time that the top five smartphone brands accounted for more than 70 per cent market share in a single quarter.

Honor (Huawei) entered top five smartphone brands for the first time. Honor (146 per cent), Xiaomi (134 per cent) and OnePlus (112 per cent) were the fastest growing smartphone brands.

Lenovo's smartphone shipments were just short of a million units, falling by more than 60 per cent year on year while Gionee shipped an all-time low of 150,000 units with shipments down 90 per cent year on year.

Overall, the smartphone market in India grew at 8 per cent to 29.5 million units for the quarter.