Despite a slowdown in the global smartphone market in 2019 and impact from the coronavirus pandemic since 2020, sales volume of smartphones reached the highest in the year 2021. This surge in the sales of smartphones was partially fueled by the influx of Chinese smartphone brands that were comparatively cheaper than the other options available on the market. Around 60 percent of the phones sold in India were by Chinese smartphone companies.
Xiaomi was one of the leading market shareholders in the Indian smartphone market. It sold phones under the brand names Mi, Redmi, and POCO. The company was able to achieve this success due to multiple factors such as tailoring its strategy based on the country’s requirements, relocating supply chains to the country, and investing in the domestic distribution network and research and development. Other Chinese original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) present in the Indian market were Vivo, Oppo, and RealMe.
With the arrival of Chinese brands, established Indian smartphone manufacturers were sidelined and lost their market share. To boost localized manufacturing and to increase the value of domestic phone manufacturing in India, the government introduced a production-linked incentive scheme for large-scale electronics manufacturing companies, both local as well as global.
The smartphone sector, in general, is rapidly changing. The average selling price of smartphones in the south Asian country was below 200 U.S. dollars. Over 30 major brands were trying to gain considerable market share in the Indian smartphone market. In such a scenario, smartphone OEMs needed to invest a huge amount of capital. This cut-throat competition led to over 40 companies in the smartphone sector exiting the country, including Sony and HTC.
