Xiaomi has retained its market share on the Indian smartphone market despite the lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The Lei Jun-owned company has been consistently performing well over the previous quarters. According to Canalys report, Xiaomi is not going to lose its market share anytime soon because of the 33.5 million smartphone shipments in Q1 2020. This is a significant jump from the previous year by 12 percent.
Vivo overtakes Samsung
While Xiaomi managed to ship 10.3 million units, Vivo also shipped out 6.7 million smartphones in Q1 2020. With this development, Vivo has surpassed Samsung to claim the second spot with a 20 percent market share. If you look at Samsung, the company shipped 6.3 million units, which is a drop of 13.7 percent. Realme and its big brother Oppo are in the next position with 3.9 million and 3.5 million units respectively. The market share of Oppo and Realme jointly has overtaken Samsung. However, both companies are known as a separate brand.
Vivo stocks in trouble
According to Canalys analyst Madhumita Chaudhary, Vivo turns out to be the main sponsor of the Indian Premier League aka IPL. The hike in the Q1 2020 market share is due to the pre-match inventory package. However, the hopes of Vivo have been dashed with the emergence of the COVID-19 outbreak. The IPL 2020 has been indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19.
We don’t expect the tournament to be held as per the schedule in 2020. Hence, Vivo’s massive offline inventory is on hold now. The special edition Vivo smartphones for IPL 2020 are a thing of the past now. The experts are of the opinion that Vivo will not be able to sell out the whole piled up inventory quickly after the lockdown.
Purchasing power decreased
The purchasing power of the people has decreased due to COVID-19. The uncertainty in the job sector is a cause of worry since many big companies are gearing up for massive layoffs if the situation doesn’t improve within the next two months. We don’t know how the future will unfold for people employed in the IT industry. The brand influence of Vivo has grown substantially. Interestingly, the Realme’s shipments increased by 200 percent in 2019.
The Canalys executives are of the opinion that the overall market share of Indian smartphone shipments will fall by the end of Q2 2020. This is due to the lockdown in the whole month of April. The company didn’t ship out any smartphones via its online store, offline stores including Flipkart and Amazon.
Xiaomi has been selling smartphones via Amazon and Flipkart and the inability of these companies to ship out the devices due to the lockdown has caused a drastic decline in the market share. However, Xiaomi is not alone here because none of the companies have shipped out smartphones via various online and offline stores across India due to the lockdown. The lockdown in India will continue until May 3 and is likely to be extended. There are reports that the Government could allow e-commerce companies to operate slowly. The shipment of devices across India will largely depend upon resumption of flight and train services.
