Xiaomi and Samsung continue to dominate the Indian smartphone market

Xiaomi remains the king of the Indian smartphone market, according to the figures for the second quarter unveiled by IDC. Overall, the Indian market continued its growth, which reached a solid 20 percent when compared to Q2 2017. Just as before, Samsung comes in the second place, followed by Vivo and OPPO from a large distance.

When it comes to shipment numbers, the entire market reached 33.5 million units in Q2 2018. The average selling price got up to US$167 from US$157 last year. Xiaomi shipped 10 million units during the given period, while Samsung managed to hit the 8 million units milestone. However, Vivo and OPPO combined failed to exceed Samsung's sales, selling less than 6 million units.

Earlier this year, Xiaomi managed to sell 5 million Redmi Note 5 handsets in just four months. The company's most impressive achievement in India this year is that one out of four smartphones sold locally was a Redmi phone.

These being said, remains to see if the recent release of the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 will have any impact on the Indian market. Since India is a very lucrative market when it comes to mid-range and low-end devices, it would not be surprising for Samsung's delay of the Android 8.0 Oreo update until early 2019 to have an impact on its local sales. After all, Xiaomi is rather quick when it comes to updating its popular smartphones available in the area. The Xiaomi Mi A1, for example, arrived less than a year ago with Android 7.1.1 onboard, was updated to 8.0 and 8.1 in the meantime, and should receive Android 9.0 Pie before the end of the year.