India smartphone market declined by -3% annually in Q1 2022. It is the third consecutive quarter of annual decline for the world’s second largest market. Continuous declines have hardly been associated with the India market which have posted double digit growth on a regular basis prior to the COVID pandemic.

Detailed analysis of the latest quarter and estimates for both smartphones and handsets are available here from our Smartphone Country Share Tracker (SCST) Service.

Xiaomi continued to lead the India smartphone market followed by Samsung and Realme. Samsung has been closing the volume gap with Xiaomi while Vivo was right on the heels of Realme for a position in the top three. The top five vendors together accounted for over 8 in 10 devices shipped during the quarter.

With the first quarter of the 2022 off to a below par start, we expect a challenging full year ahead for the smartphone vendors in the country. They are likely to face multitude of challenges including inflationary pressures, supply issues and intermittent COVID disruptions. Smartphone vendors would have to plan for and ask questions on:

1. Growing inflation and the subsequent price rise for devices in the upcoming quarters. Oil supplies and pricing stand disrupted with the war in Europe in progress. This in turn is having a cascading effect on pricing of other items including mobile phones. How can vendors manage a retail price hikes in the rest of the quarters of 2022?

2. COVID resurgence in China could complicate further the supply lines that are already under the hammer. Smartphone vendors need to plan for further disruptions from the new COVID wave in China.

3. Indian government is gearing up for 5G spectrum auction in 2022. This would be followed by a network roll out in early 2023. Should vendors be aggressively switching to a 5G portfolio in 2022? If yes, which price tiers are to be narrowed down to?

4. With multitude of challenges staring at in 2022 which of the 4P’s become most critical in the year? From a product strategy standpoint, is it ideal time to push for a more premium portfolio? What should be the pace of inclusion of the premium portfolio in vendors product mix?

5. Which distribution channel emerges as the most critical in 2022 with the kind of challenges the vendors are facing? What is the optimal level of Offline Vs. Online for each of the vendors in the year?