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Samsung is losing the race in India’s premium smartphone market as rival Apple continues to increase its dominance in the segment, driven by robust iPhone sales and festival season discounts.
Shortly after Apple CEO Tim Cook announced an all-time revenue record in India yet again for the September quarter, the company recorded its best-ever quarter of shipments at four million units in the third quarter of calendar year 2024 (Q3CY24), led by the iPhone 15 and iPhone 13, according to a report by the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Driven by sales of devices such as the iPhone 15 and iPhone 13, the premium smartphone segment (between $600-$800) – where Apple operates – registered the highest growth of 86 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y), bringing the overall share in this category to four per cent, up from 2 per cent a year ago.
Apple’s share in the segment increased to 71 per cent, while Samsung’s dropped to 19 per cent from 30 per cent in the year-ago period.
The iPhone maker also emerged as the second-largest player in the online channel, with iPhone 15 and iPhone 13 as the highest-shipped devices, the report added.
While Apple has increased its focus on its new iPhone models in India’s price-sensitive market, it is seeing older iPhones do well.
“During the festival season sales, the iPhone 15 was selling at around Rs 55,000 and the iPhone 13 was at around Rs 45,000.
"During the whole year, two-thirds of Apple’s overall sales usually come from older generations,” said Navkendar Singh, Associate Vice President, Devices Research, IDC.
Meanwhile, the broader smartphone market grew for the fifth consecutive quarter at 5.6 per cent Y-o-Y to reach 46 million units.
Despite retaining its position as the sixth largest player by volume in Q3, Apple’s market share increased to 8.6 per cent during the quarter from 5.7 per cent a year ago.
At the same time, Samsung’s share has fallen from 16.2 per cent in Q3 CY2023 to 12.3 per cent this year, the report showed.
This has, in turn, further widened the gap between the value share of Apple and Samsung, which stood at 28.7 per cent and 15.2 per cent, respectively.
The year 2024 has been difficult for Samsung.
After being a market leader for the past few years, the South Korean phone maker slipped to the third spot in terms of volume in the September quarter, behind Chinese brands Vivo and Oppo.
According to reports, the company also planned to lay off as many as 200 executives in the Indian business across functions due to slowing business growth and poor consumer demand.
“Samsung got some of its pricing wrong in the first half of the year.
"We do expect a bounce back but it will be very difficult for Samsung to grow this year compared to last year,” Singh added.
Apple’s rapid ascent in the premium smartphone market is reportedly now also rekindling the debate of Android vs iOS.
iPhone users in India claim to prefer Apple’s consistency in user interface (UI) across its products, which tends to differ when it comes to premium Android devices, say analysts.
