In 2015, Lenovo and its subsidiary Motorola launched a slew of feature-rich smartphones with aggressive price tags in India. As expected, this strategy has helped the company to become one of the top 3 smartphone makers in India.
Market watchdog Canalys has reported that the Chinese technology major and Motorola together were able to ship close to 3 million smartphones in India, thus, registering a healthy 60% year-on-year growth. This robust sales growth has helped Lenovo become the third biggest smartphone brand in the country and relegate domestic rival Intex to the fourth position.
"Local players are finding it tough to compete with global vendors on product quality, making it hard for them to push products into higher price bands," said Rushabh Doshi, Canalys Mobility Analyst.
Also read: Apple, Huawei, Xiaomi register above-average year-over-year smartphone shipment growth in 2015: IDC
He also added that the new market strategy of selling phones online have reduced the burden on new entrants to set up base in India.
Without having to invest a huge amount of money on building their own distribution channel and inventories, they can just focus on promotional activity to create brand awareness.
Chinese vendors Xiaomi and Vivo have reaped success with low-cost 4G-LTE mobiles phones and this has apparently resulted in steep decline in phone shipments for domestic players such as Lava, Karbonn and Intex.
Also read: Smartphone shipments to India increase by 21%: IDC report
Micromax, despite being placed second in the top smartphone makers' list, is feeling the most heat from MNC brands. The company's phone shipments reportedly dropped by 20% due to inventory build-up in its distribution network.
South Korean firm Samsung currently holds the top slot with an estimated market share of around 25%.
