Smartphone shipment in India cross 30 million units in Q3 2016, Lenovo replaces Micromax as number 2

According to IDC, the Indian smartphone market crossed the 30 million unit shipments milestone in the Q3 2016 (July, August, September), which is highest for any given quarter. Shipments grew about 17.5 percent on quarter and 11 percent year-on-year during the period.

The reason for increased sale in Q3 is due to the festive season, online sales and an early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October. Relaince Jio's 4G service has also played a major role in the growing smartphone sales and high demand of 4G handsets, as they comprised nine out of every 10 smartphones sold by e-commerce platforms, and seven out of 10 smartphone shipped overall.

According to the report, Chinese smartphone makers increased their online shipments, leading to an impressive on-quarter growth of 35 percent in the online segment, which now have over 31.6 percent of the market.

Lenovo (and Motorola) is leading in the online channel, followed by Xiaomi, with shipments driven primarily by Lenovo's K5 series and Moto G4 series model. For Xiaomi, the Redmi Note and Redmi 3s fueled the online shipments.

Moreover, Lenovo (and Motorola) are the second top smartphone players in the country with a share of 9.6 percent, swapping position with domestic vendor Micromax, which stood at third with 7.5 percent share, just 0.1 percent more than Xiaomi.

Despite the Note7 fiasco due to faulty battery, Samsung still held the top spot with 23 percent share in the Indian smartphone market, with 8 percent sequential growth and 9.7 percent growth from the same period last year. The South Korean tech giant has been aggressively expanding its smartphone portfolio in the country by launching new Galaxy A, J and On series devices for the past couple of months.

Overall close to 32.3 million smartphones were shipped during Q3 2016, while feature phones shipments stood at 39.9 million, an increase of 18.67 percent on-quarter.

That being said, the recent demonetisation by the government is said to have a negative impact on smartphone sale in Q4 2016.

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