Online smartphone sales at new heights in Q1 2019 - Xiaomi tops list; know how handset makers fared

The smartphone industry is aggressively expanding its presence in India. Smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Samsung, OnePlus, Real me and Motorola had started their operations in India through e-commerce platforms and have eventually expanded to the offline route as well. But online retail accounts for a big chunk of phone sales in the country. The online smartphone sales in India reached the new heights in Q1 2019. According to Counterpoint Research, the sales of a smartphone during Q1 2019 grow as an estimated 43%, which represents 17% year-on-year growth. Whereas the offline shipments decreased by roughly 4% YoY. 

Reason for online sales growth is mainly because of the surplus launches of new devices, discounts and sales offered by the smartphone makers like Xiaomi, Samsung and Realme during the period. As per the reports, the largest share of online smartphone sales holds by the E-commerce giant Flipkart. It holds 53% of online smartphone sales followed by Amazon India with 36% and Xiaomi with 11% respectively. 

If Amazon compared with Q1 2018 year sale then it saw the fastest growth of all retailers with a 38% increase. During the quarter Amazon was also the preferred destination for purchasing premium smartphones ( costing over INR 30,000) since the website offers a wide variety of Apple, Samsung and OnePlus devices.

Interestingly, Six out of the top ten most sold phones were made by Xiaomi. In which the company's best selling phone was Redmi 6A in particular during the period. Reportedly  Xiaomi's Redmi Note 6 Pro and Redmi Note 7 Pro had the strong sales which secured 43% of the total online smartphone shipments.

Whereas, Samsung saw a 31% YoY increase in the online sales segment driven by flash sales of its new Galaxy M10 and M20 helping it secure the second spot in terms of market share. 

On the top three vendors list, Realme managed to crack the top three position with an 11% market share, by strong sales and aggressive pricing of the Realme 3 series. In general, the most sought after devices for the period were in the range of Rs 15,000-20,000 respectively.