Phablets account for 30 percent of all smartphones in India, 67 percent smartphones priced below $200

Phablets or smartphones with displays between 5 and 6.99-inches accounted for 30 percent of all smartphones shipped in India in Q2, 2013, according to the latest IDC figures. Phablet shipments increased 17 times year-on-year with smartphone shipments hitting 9.3 million units compared to just 3.5 million units in Q2, 2012. The magic formula for India seems to be having a sub-$200 smartphone with a large display and dual-SIM slots.

Local vendors continue to dominate the Indian smartphone space with Micromax shipping over 2 million smartphones in the quarter making it the second largest player with a market share of 22 percent behind Samsung’s 26 percent share. IDC claims that local vendors now account for over half of the total smartphone market in India.

“The growth in the India smartphone market is driven by consistent performance by local vendors who accounted for more than half of the total smartphone market in 2Q13. These vendors have been scaling up operations owing to rising migration of the user base from feature phones to smartphones,” says Manasi Yadav, senior market analyst with IDC India.

Another interesting trend is that two-thirds of all smartphones shipped during the quarter were priced below $200. “The key for growth in this market, as with most emerging markets, is a low-priced phone equipped with a large screen and dual-SIM slots,” says Kiranjeet Kaur, senior market analyst with IDC’s Client Devices group. “The dual SIM phenomena, which had accelerated the growth of local vendors in feature phone, turned to dual SIM smartphones flooding the Indian market. Topped with an attractive sub-US$200 price tag, these smartphones are highly attractive,” she adds.

This report is damning for global smartphone vendors, which have virtually no significant presence in the sub-$200 smartphone segment. While some have token presence in this segment, none have the magic formula of a “low priced, large screen and dual-SIM” smartphone in that space.

According to the report, Samsung leads the smartphone shipment market share followed by Micromax, Karbonn, Nokia and Sony respectively to make the top five players in India.