Home bred technology firm Micromax has reportedly overtaken Samsung as India's numero-uno smartphone vendor.
Market watch dog Canalys in its latest report on smartphone sales has claimed that the Micromax's devices constituted 22% out of 26.1 million phones sold in India, thus making it the top seller in the Q4 quarter ending in December. Samsung slipped to second spot with 20% share.
"Canalys believes catering to local market preferences will become increasingly important. Micromax has been quicker than its competitors to improve the appeal of devices, for example, by including a wide variety of local languages on its Unite phones. Lava, another domestic vendor, has launched devices that cater to the preference for greater battery life – in this case a couple of days. But vital to success is selling these handsets at low price points to appeal to the bulging mid-level income market in India," said Rushabh Doshi, an analyst at Canalys.
Domestic players Karbonn Mobiles and Lava International Ltd made it to the third and fourth slots respectively in the top smartphone makers' chart.
This comes as a no surprise to many as Micromax has been steadily increasing its device portfolio keeping in tune with dynamics of fast growing Indian smartphone market, while Samsung is losing its sheen lately for over-priced phones with sub-par features.
This report is a double blow for Samsung as it comes close on the heels of the company slipping to third position in China. Xiaomi and Apple Inc overtook the South Korean company as top smartphone vendors in Q4 ending in December 2014.
[Read more: World's Top Smartphone Makers' List of 2014 Calendar]
Samsung is slated to unveil the new Galaxy S6 next month in Barcelona. As Galaxy S5 failed to live up to its expectation in 2014, a lot is riding on the Samsung's upcoming flagship smartphone. Many believe Galaxy S6 will directly impact company's prospect for the year 2015.
Update:
Just hours after the Canalys' research study stating Micromax as the new smartphone leader in India made headlines, Samsung has responed to the report.
The South Korean company has vehemently dismissed the Canalys report by releasing its report supported by GFK India. It claims Samsung is still the market leader in terms of sales in 2014 calender year.
"In the entire year 2014, we continued to lead the market with innovative and exciting offerings. Our volume market share in the smartphone market in the year was 35.7 percent, which is more than double than that of the next player, while our value share was 40.2 percent, which is more than four times the next player." He added that, First Post quoted Asim Warsi, Vice President of Marketing for Samsung's Mobile business in India.
"The GfK data is based on actual retail sales in 50,000-plus population cities," he added.
