With the Covid-19 pandemic leading people to cut on discretionary spending, the India feature phone market declined 68 percent (year-on-year in the second quarter this year, a Counterpoint Research report said on Friday.
Consumers in this highly cost-sensitive segment tried to save money by reducing discretionary purchases, said the report.
The nationwide lockdown imposed by the Indian government to combat Covid-19 resulted in zero shipments during April. This was also the time that saw a huge exodus of migrants from cities as many of them lost livelihood.
itel remains the market leader in the feature phone market reaching its highest ever share of 24 percent in the second quarter of 2020, said the report. Just a year ago, it’s share was a mere 10 percent in the same market.
The market share of home-grown company Lava went up from 12 percent in Q2 of 2019 to 23 percent in Q2 of 2020.
Samsung’s share in the India feature phone market reached 22 percent in Q2 of this year, from 21 percent a year ago.
They were followed by Nokia and Karbonn whose market share stood at nine percent and five percent, respectively.
Compared to the 68 percent year-on-year decline in the shipment of feature phones in India in Q2 of 2020, India’s smartphone shipments declined by 51 percent year-on-year in the same period.
Moreover, Jio-Google’s recently announced partnership to bring highly affordable 4G Android smartphones may further impact the feature phone market in India which is home to more than 350 million feature phone users.
The growing anti-China sentiment due to border tensions in Ladakh has “given a window of opportunity for brands like Samsung and local Indian brands such as Micromax and Lava, to recapture market share,” according to Shilpi Jain, the Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research.
