Smartphone sales in India soared during the July-September period, rising 20 percent over the same quarter last year, as India approached its festive season, Counterpoint Technology Market Research said in a release Tuesday. Samsung, which retained its lead in the Indian smartphone market, led the 4G segment too, helped by its J series mid-tier smartphones.
Sales also reversed the sluggishness of the previous two quarters to increase 12 percent from the April-June period, according to the Hong Kong-based market research company. More than one in three mobile phones shipped in India is now a smartphone.
The “Indian smartphone market is being fueled by two device trends, one is LTE (long-term evolution) and other being phablet” size, Tarun Pathak, a senior analyst at Counterpoint Research said in the release. LTE refers to the high-speed 4G wireless technology, and Phablet typically refers to smartphones with screen size of 5 inches or more.
4G smartphone sales more than doubled to 10 million units during the three-month period over the previous quarter, and rose almost 2400 percent over the year-ago period. Additionally, one in three smartphones sold during the quarter was a 4G phone and one in two smartphones sold was a phablet, the researcher said.