India’s smartphone market shall hit a record high in 2021 with an output of 173 million units, a study conducted by Counterpoint Research has claimed. According to the report, approximately 100 million phones are to be shipped to India in the second half of this year, taking the vertical’s growth rate in the country to 14 per cent Y-o-Y, the study reads.
Since the lifting of Covid-driven restrictions in June 2021, the market has been witnessing strong consumer demand. This consumer sentiment is likely to spill over during the upcoming festive season that spans from August to November, the report claims.
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Presently, India is the world’s second largest smartphone market after China, so much so that the country outperformed North America, Latin America and Africa 2020.
Given India’s sizeable population, which presently stands at 1.39 billion, and the tendency to upgrade Indian users showed while switching from feature phones to smartphones, the size of the market in the country is likely to cross the 200 million mark within the next 5 years, Counterpoint has claimed.
Notably, the Indian smartphone market had reached 158 million units two years back in 2019.
If the count of Covid-19 cases in India remains under check and the vaccination programme continues to gather pace, the country’s economy will bounce back and consequently lift consumer confidence, the company has said.
In 2020, the 5G segment accounted for less than 3 per cent of the market share. This, however, is likely to change expeditiously, with the demand for 5G devices growing more than 8-fold to touch 32 million units in 2021, the company declared.
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If these numbers are achieved, 5G devices will account for almost 19 per cent of India’s overall smartphone market.
