This year hasn’t been good for the world, and it has clearly been the worst for China. First COVID-19 pandemic that originated in China spread across the global, crippling nations and economies in a major way, putting everyone in lockdown.
With this, one thing was certain — the world wasn’t very happy with China.
Reuters
In India, this came at a time when anti-Chinese sentiments were bubbling. But still Chinese smartphones were selling like hotcakes.
However, as tensions rose at the Indo-China border, the nation staunchly stepped against it and #BoycottChina started trending. And this meant all Chinese smartphone brands in India would feel some effect of the bubbling anti-China sentiment.
And now, reports highlight that Chinese smartphone makers 2020 shipments are considerably less than what these brands recorded the same time last year.
Drop in Chinese smartphone sales
Shilpi Jain, research analyst at Counterpoint Research explains, “The contribution of Chinese brands fell to 72% in Q2 2020 from 81% in Q1 2020. This was mainly due to the mixture of stuttering supply for some major Chinese brands such as Oppo, Vivo and Realme, and growing anti-China sentiment that was compounded by stringent actions taken by the government to ban more than 50 apps of Chinese origin and delay the import of goods from China amid extra scrutiny. This all resulted from the India-China border dispute during June.”
The report highlights that overall shipments in India dropped by 51 percent year on year, coming down to just 18 million units in Q2 of 2020, according to Counterpoint Research. This was primarily due to the lockdown. However, by June 2020 as the nation started to unlock, shipments showed a mild decline of 0.3 percent year over year.
Samsung rises to second best smartphone brand in India
Amidst all this, one smartphone brand has emerged victorious — Samsung — who has now claimed the number two spot with a 26 percent market share — from 16 percent in the previous quarter — in India.
Samsung reached 94 percent of pre-COVID-19 sale levels while claiming the second spot in the latest Counterpoint Research report.
Reuters
Change in Samsung’s strategy by giving emphasis to offline channels as well as introducing features like SamsungCare+ has helped the brand in getting this bump-up.
It was also one of the first brands to reach full manufacturing capacity by the end of June according to Counterpoint.
Xiaomi prevailed on top spot
Xiaomi still claims the top spot with 29 percent market share. Vivo sits on third with 17 percent share, as it exited the quarter with 60 percent pre-COVID levels.
Realme and Oppo both ended at 14 percent market share, each.
