More than 30 million smartphones was shipped in India in the third quarter of 2016, registering 7.5 percent growth over the previous quarter, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC), mobile phone market tracker.  

“This seasonal spike in third quarter of the year can be attributed to the channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October,” said Karthik J, Senior Market Analyst, Client Devices, IDC India.

IDC expect 2016 to end with a higher single digit annual growth, considering the smartphone performance till the third quarter.

On the other hand, feature phones market declined at 12.4 percent over the same period last year, pulling down the overall mobile phone shipments marginally by 3.3 percent. Migration from feature phone to smartphone has, however, slowed down, helping India-based vendors to maintain their dominance in overall mobile market. Though feature phone market is consolidated with few key vendors, it is also witnessing the emergence of new brands, IDC noted in its report.

“Entry of the new vendors have extended the feature phone supply since past few quarters. However, with expected entry of Jio in the feature phone market, category is expected to grow significantly. This in turn might further slowdown the feature phone to smartphone migration,” said Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, IDC India.

Overall mobile phone market shipments closed at 72.3 Million units in the third quarter of 2016 with an 18.1 percent sequential growth.

4G-compatible smartphones grew 24.8 percent over previous quarter. According to IDC, 7 out of 10 smartphone shipped in third quarter of 2016 were 4G enabled, and 9 out of 10 smartphone sold by e-commerce companies were 4G. The rollout of Reliance Jio network has further increased the share of 4G enabled smartphones in India.

Samsung leads the Indian smartphone market with 23 percentage share and 8 percent sequential growth. The South Korea-based mobile manufacturing company has registered 9.7 percent growth from the same period last year.

Lenovo Group (including Motorola) with 9.6 percent share of smartphones, Micromax, Xiaomi, Reliance Jio are among other top five manufacturers, including Samsung, dominating the Indian smartphone market.

Indian vendor Micromax has. however, slipped to third position with a 32 percent decline in smartphone shipments over previous quarter. But Chinese vendor Xiaomi, on the other hand, is making inroads in the Indian market with larger footprint. It has grown more than 2.5 times over the same period last year.