Feature phone shipments during this period improved by 24%

Domestic manufacturing of mobile phones saw a significant increase in the third quarter of 2018, with almost 94% of the handsets being made in the country, a new report from CyberMedia Research (CMR) has said.

According to CMR’s “India Mobile Handset Market Review Report”, India’s mobile handset market recorded 9% sequential growth during the quarter and smartphones grew sequentially by 29%.

Feature phone shipments during this period improved by 24% while fusion phones witnessed a sequential decline of 41%.

“As of third quarter of 2018, local manufacturing has now seen a significant boost. Completely knocked down (CKD) level manufacturing constitutes almost half of the overall market. Smartphone brands like OPPO, Vivo and Xiaomi have moved largely to surface-mount technology (SMT).

“Reliance Jiophone also entered into SMT production in this quarter. Among domestic players, Lava has the major share in SMT production,” said Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR late Wednesday.

Meanwhile, CKD level manufacturing surpassed semi knocked down (SKD) manufacturing in the third quarter of 2018.

This quarter also saw aggressive launches by several smartphone players in the wake of the festive season.

According to Narinder Kumar, Lead Analyst, IIG-CMR, “Q3 2018 saw sharp growth in smartphones as well as feature phones”.

“The highly competitive smartphone market witnessed traction towards online sales supported by online sales with attractive discounts, buy back offers and financing schemes in October,” Mr. Kumar added.