Smartphone shipments in India have taken a hit in the April-June quarter due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Since the government of India announced lockdown at the end of March 2020, smartphone vendors witnessed a halt in production, which further dropped the shipments in India. A new Canalys report states that smartphone shipments in India dropped 48% in the April-June quarter to 17.3 million units. All the smartphone manufactures faced low supply issue due to production halt and decreased demand as all the offline and online retailers were prohibited from selling smartphones during the lockdown period.
Apple was the Least Impacted Vendor
The report by Canalys revealed that among all the smartphone vendors, Apple was the least affected vendor as it just witnessed 20% year-to-year over 250,000 in Q2, 2020. Talking about the market share, Xiaomi owned 31% of the entire smartphone market and shipped 5.3 million smartphones in the quarter. In second position is the Chinese smartphone manufacturer Vivo which shipped 3.7 million units and increased its market share to 21.3 %. In third place, Samsung witnessed a huge impact and it just shipped 2.9 million smartphones in this quarter. The major reason behind the decreased exports was the shutdown of Vietnam manufacturing unit in the entire Q2, 2020. Oppo and Realme stood at fourth and fifth position with 2.2 million and 1.7 million unit shipments respectively during the quarter.
Smartphone Vendors Strategy Affected Due to Lockdown
The new regulations that have been imposed by the government around smartphone manufacturing have affected the strategy of smartphone vendors. As reported by ET Telecom, the demand for smartphones slightly increased as soon as the market opened. However, the production of smartphones was lesser than the demand for smartphones in India. Also, Canalys Research Analyst Adwait Mardikar stated that Chinese vendors are facing hassle due to the Aatmanirbhar initiative by the government to promote Indian smartphone manufacturer and switch the profits from Chinese vendors pockets to Indian smartphone manufacturers. Canalys data also revealed that 96% of the smartphones which was sold in 2019, were manufactured in India.
