Flipkart winning the race in online smartphone sales in India


The growth of online retail market has been steady for the past few months. Smartphones are the top selling products in the Indian e-commerce portals and Flipkart stands ahead of its competitors in mobile sales.

If we consider the analysis made by Counterpoint Research about the online mobile sales in India, during 2017, Flipkart Offers leads the table with more than 50% of the total mobile sales happening through it. The second and third position were occupied by Amazon and Mi.com (Xiaomi website) with market shares of 33% and 10% respectively.

Even though Flipkart had overall lead in mobile sales, when we see sales based on mobile costs, Amazon had sold more mobiles in the premium category. Amazon led by Jeff Bezos, had shipped more than 63% of mobiles belonging to the premium category. This was partly due to its sales of OnePlus and Apple devices. Flipkart had less than 33% sales in the premium mobile segment.
Xiaomi, Samsung, Lenovo, Apple and OnePlus constituted the top 5 smartphone brands sold online in terms of revenue.

Market Share

If we look at the market share on the brands sold online, Xiaomi leads the table with the biggest market share of 44% in 2017. Its growth is a staggering 219% fr0om the previous year. Xiaomi’s market share was mainly due to its budget devices like Rs.9999 ($155) Redmi Note 4, Rs.6999 Redmi 4 and Rs.5999 4A that were a big hit.

Online phone sales rose by 23% in India last year. But it is expected to flatten in 2018 as the brands are moving towards a hybrid online-offline model. Karn Chauhan, research analyst at counterpoint had said that, “The high-spec but low-cost, value for money smartphone models exclusively available only on online platforms were instrumental in successfully creating unprecedented demand throughout the year.

There were also few online events like Amazon’s ‘The Great Indian Sale’ and Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Day Sale’ which increased the mobile sales. This year, some of the brands are expanding to the offline channels. Xiaomi, the Chinese phone manufacturer, which had started selling mobiles through online channels 3 years ago has now started to shift to offline sales. It has partnered with retail chains like Univercell, Vijay Sales and Croma to sell its models while also opening its own Mi Home stores.
Tarun Pathak, associate director at Counterpoint said that, all e-commerce players should consider increasing [the] number of serviceable ZIP codes [pin codes], hybrid offline stores and customer service kiosks to attract and gain more users to the platform.

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