Motorola helps Lenovo displace Micromax as second biggest smartphone-maker in India: IDC

Chinese consumer electronics major Lenovo is now India's second biggest smartphone-maker, displacing the home-bred Micromax, which had held the runners-up position for a few years.

Market watch firm International Data Corporation (IDC) on Tuesday released its mobile phone shipments report for the third quarter ending September 2016.

Also read: Apple working on Snapchat's rival smart eye-gear with AR capability; will it be launched with iPhone 8?

As per IDC, the smartphone market in India crossed the milestone of 30 million unit shipments for the first time in a quarter in CY Q3 2016, maintaining a healthy traction with 11 percent year-on-year growth.

"This seasonal spike in third quarter of the year can be attributed to the channel preparation for the festive season, mega online sales and early import of smartphones owing to Chinese holidays in October," Karthik J, senior market analyst, client devices, IDC India, said in statement.

South Korea-based Samsung continues to maintain its status as the leader of the smartphone market in India, with healthy market share of 23 percent, 13.4 percent above from its closest rival.

However, the second position has seen a huge shake-up. Lenovo, with the backing of its subsidiary, Motorola, has moved a notch above Micromax. It witnessed 46.1 percent increase in shipments as compared to the previous quarter. The newly-launched Moto E3 Power and G4 models and the Lenovo K5 series shipments accounted for over 40 percent of its total volume.

Despite the #BanChineseProducts campaign trending on social media platforms, Micromax smartphone shipments declined by 32 percent.

On the other hand, the Chinese rival, Xiaomi, for the first time since its debut in India in 2014, has broken into the Top 5 leader board. Thanks to the feature-rich Redmi 3S series and Redmi Note 3 smartphones, it has grown more than 2.5 times over the same period last year. It currently holds 7.4 percent market share, just 0.5 less than Micromax's share.

Going at this rate, Xiaomi is most likely to overtake Micromax in the fourth quarter.

Reliance Jio, which made its debut less than a year ago with LYF series phones, managed to grab 7 percent market.

As far as overall mobile phone (smartphone and feature phones) shipments is concerned, Samsung leads the chart with 23.2 percent, followed by Lava (9.8 percent) and Intex (9.8 percent), respectively.

Micromax (8.9 percent) and Karbonn (5.4 percent) rank as the fourth and fifth major mobile phone manufacturers in India in the third quarter.