India growth story: Micromax in top 10 list of world mobile sellers

Emerging markets contribute to the sales of many manufacturers

GN Bureau | August 21, 2015


#micromax   #Samsung   #apple   #Microsoft   #mobile   #Chinese   #india  

It is a Make in India story of a different kind. Indian mobile phone maker Micromax features on the list at the 10th spot with 9.9 million units sold in the April-June 2015 quarter.

Samsung remains the top-selling smartphone brand in the world between the months of April and June, despite having lost market share (21.9% against 26.2% in 2014) to Apple, which gained some ground (+2.4 points of market share) and Chinese manufacturers Huawei (+1.7 points) and Xiaomi (+0.6 points).

In all, Samsung sold 72 million smartphones during this period compared to 48 million for Apple. Huawei (25.8 million), Lenovo (16.4 million) and Xiaomi (16 million) complete the top five.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's market share dipped from 9.9% (43.8 million units) in the corresponding quarter last year to 6.2%, while Micromax registered a rise from 1.9% (8.6 million units) to 2.2%. In spite of its Windows platform accounting for a mere 2.5% of the worldwide smartphone sales, Microsoft's Asha range of feature phones still remains popular in developing world at a declining rate.

According to Gartner, nearly 330 million smartphones were sold worldwide in the second quarter of 2015. Representing a 13.5% increase compared to the same period one year earlier, the numbers nevertheless reveal the slowest progression recorded since 2013.

All models combined (not only smartphones), Samsung has sold 88 million mobile phones across the globe in the second quarter, far ahead of Apple (48 million), Microsoft (27.6 million), Huawei (26.1 million) and LG (17.6 million).

Figures show that vendors, who are focused on the emerging markets, such as Huawei, ZTE, TCL Communication and Micromax, benefited from high demand in these markets, while global vendors such as Sony, Samsung and HTC struggled to achieve growth at the high end of the market.

The worldwide sales of smartphones in the second quarter also grew at the slowest pace since 2013 as sales in China declined for the first time.

Regarding operating systems, Android and iOS together hold almost 95% of all smartphone sales. Google's operating system represents 82.2% of global smartphone sales (-1.6 points) against 14.6% for iOS (+2.4 points). Windows Phone and Blackberry are nowhere near the same figures with, respectively, 2.5% (-0.3 points) and 0.3% (-0.4 points) of the global market share.

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