Samsung is having to deal with intense competition from Chinese companies that are flooding lucrative markets like India with affordable and powerful smartphones. Samsung's market share in India has been declining over the past few quarters primarily due to this reason and its woes don't seem to be ending soon. Chinese smartphone makers took their biggest chunk ever out of India's $10 billion smartphone market late last year.
Samsung remains the top smartphone vendor in India but its market share has been declining. While it accounted for 30 percent of the country's smartphone market about a year ago, that figure went down to 21 percent in November 2016, as per the data provided by market research firm Counterpoint. On the other hand, Chinese brands like Xiaomi, OnePlus, Huawei, Lenovo and Oppo accounted for more than 50 percent of the Indian smartphone market combined. That's a remarkable growth when you consider that this figure was at 19 percent just one year back.
Chinese brands were previously associated with low quality but the companies have turned things around. Their handsets are much better now, provide robust specifications at affordable prices in a market where cost is often the biggest consideration among customers. Moreover, Chinese brands have also been relying on high-profile endorsements from local celebrities and running elaborate sponsorship campaigns to get the word out about their devices.
Counterpoint's data shows that in the very competitive $120 to $440 mid-range smartphone market, Chinese brands have doubled their market share to 68 percent while Samsung's market share has declined 14 percentage points since November 2015.
Samsung continues to duke it out with its Chinese rivals in one of the world's most lucrative smartphone markets. It would be interesting to see how all of this plays out.
