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Reliance Jio is fifth-largest smartphone vendor in the market.
The smartphone market in Indian experienced strong quarterly growth of 17.1% in the second quarter of 2016, following two successive quarters of decline.
According to latest figures from IDC, shipments reached 27.5 million. This also represented marginal growth of 3.7% compared to the same period of 2015.
As pointed out by IDC analyst Karthik J, the main beneficiaries of the growth were Chinese vendors with 75% growth year-on-year.
"China based vendors’ shipments grew 28% over [the] previous quarter [to] which Lenovo group, Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Gionee were key contributors driving the growth,” he said.
It also seems that sales have been boosted by what local media has described as the Reliance Jio 4G effect, according to IDC analyst Jaipal Singh.
“[The] sub-$150 segment has been a strong foothold for Indian vendors, which is now facing increased pressure from both global and China-based vendors. [The] aggressive entry of Reliance Jio with shipments of over a half a million 4G devices has captured significant share in [the] sub-$50 segment at the expense of other Indian vendors’ share,” said Singh.
This development ensured that Reliance Jio – which sells own-branded smartphones under the Lyf brand – retained the fifth spot in the ranking of smartphone vendors with 12.3% sequential growth in Q2 2016 and a 6.8% market share. Samsung continued to lead the Indian smartphone market with a 25.1% share, registering 10.9% sequential growth over the previous quarter and 15% growth from the same period last year.
Micromax, Lenovo and Intex were in second, third and fourth place respectively.
Meanwhile reports over the weekend said that Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani met telecom secretary JS Deepak on Friday last week to discuss the commercial rollout of Reliance 4G services. According to NDTV, Ambani provided a full update on the service, which is already said to have gained 1.5 million users during the trial phase.
