Smartphone shipments in India rise by 167 percent: report

According to a new report by Cyber Media Research, India saw 73.5 million mobile shipments for the period of January to April 2013, marking a 11.1 percent growth year-on-year.

The smartphone segment continues to grow in India, with 9.4 million smartphones shipped during the Jan-Apr period which marks 167.3 percent growth on an annual basis.

"The featurephones market in India has matured, whereas the smartphones category is showing promising growth. This is attracting relatively new entrants such as Micromax and Karbonn to start offering smartphones, particularly for entry level users who would like to migrate to a more sophisticated mobile experience", stated Faisal Kawoosa, Lead Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice.

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Smartphones however constitute only 12.8 percent of mobiles shipped during the period while feature phones constitute 87.2 percent of mobiles shipped.

In the smartphone segment Samsung was on top with 40.7 percent of market share, followed by two Indian vendors: Micromax at 19.3 percent and Karbonn at 8.6 percent market share respectively.

Commenting on this Tarun Pathak, Analyst, CMR Telecoms Practice said that as far as the Indian smartphone market is concerned said that that presence of two Indian manufacturers in the top three shows that market dynamics have changed in the India smartphones segment.

"One of the key reasons for this is that a large number of feature phone users are migrating to entry-level smartphones. A significant proportion of these were already using the devices of local vendors and preferred to continue with a smartphone of the same brand. Thus, local vendors have been able to introduce their new smartphone offerings to this 'captive' customer base," he said.

"The trend of dominance of the India smartphones market by local vendors is likely to continue during the coming year," he added.