Xiaomi continued to dominate India's smartphone market in Q3 2020

Smartphone shipments in India hit a record high of 50 million units in the third quarter of the year, according to the latest data from Canalys. While the smartphone market in India witnessed a sharp 51% decline in Q2 2020, shipments increased 8% YoY in the third quarter.

Unsurprisingly, Xiaomi was the largest smartphone vendor in the country in Q3 2020. The company's shipments grew 9% YoY to reach 13.1 million units. Samsung, which dropped to the third position in India's smartphone market in the first quarter of the year, regained second place from Vivo in the last quarter. Samsung shipped 10.2 million smartphones during the July-September period, up from 9.5 million units in Q3 2019.

Even though it dropped to third place in Q3 2020, Vivo's shipments actually increased by 19% YoY from 7.4 million to 8.8 million units. However, Realme was the fastest-growing smartphone brand, registering a 23% growth compared to the same period last year. Collectively, Chinese Android OEMs captured a 76% share of the Indian smartphone market in the last quarter, growing from 74% a year ago.

Canalyst Research Analyst, Varun Kannan, said in a statement:

Ongoing tension between India and China has been a hot topic in the past few months, but we have yet to see a significant impact on purchase decisions of mass market customers. However, the tensions have caused Chinese smartphone brands to act more conservatively in recent months, reducing their marketing spend, and carefully trying to project the image that they are important contributors to, and stakeholders in, the economic future of India.