How exactly is India’s smartphone market shaping up is a question that has no easy answer. And to even try and find one, we may have to rely heavily on hindsight. The flagships are almost lined up, with Xiaomi the only phone maker to place its piece to complete the puzzle for the next few months. I say this now, because the latest data that has landed on my desk, indicates that India’s premium smartphone segment (that itself is a wide band between ₹25,000 and ₹50,000) and super premium bands (that’s upwards of ₹50,000) is seeing continued growth momentum.
It may or may not mean that people actually have greater spending power (those not averse to living with EMIs throw conventional calculations out of the window), but nevertheless, people are buying more expensive smartphones. CyberMedia Research (CMR) data points out that through the calendar year 2024, premium phones grew at 10% year on year while super-premium and uber premium phone sales grew 25%. In contrast, the affordable (that is sub ₹7,000) and the ₹7,000 and ₹25,000 mid-range brackets
The point about EMIs, or equated monthly instalments (another word for a loan) for a moment, credit card EMIs, payment gateway EMIs and indeed financing at stores, is a business that is only growing. Reminds me of something that fintech company LazyPay shared at the fag end of 2024 — they were enabling the EMI option at checkout, which would allow merchants or stores to convert purchases between ₹5,000 and ₹1,00,000 into repayment tenures between three months to a year. “The integration will enable PayU’s extensive merchant base of over 5 lakh businesses to offer flexible checkout options to millions of customers,” the official estimates.
I cast no apprehensions on this trend and trajectory of premium phones and the perception of aspiration. Data tells us as much. What I do wonder about are the foundations of this purchasing power. LazyPay’s estimates are that India’s digital credit adoption is expected to reach ₹7.6 trillion by 2026. That perhaps holds the answer.
The CMR India Mobile Handset Market Review Report for CY2024 tells us that Xiaomi (18% share in CY 2024), Samsung (17% share), Vivo (17% share) and Oppo (11% share) lead in terms of market share. That’s the bigger picture. The subplots include Vivo taking a decisive lead in terms of smartphone sales in Q4 2024, with an 18% share — that’s up from 16% year on year. Xiaomi follows with a 15% share, though down from the heights of 19% in the same period a year prior. Samsung too dropped from 19% to end Q4 2024 with a 15% share. Apple grew from 6% share to 11% of the pie, something even Tim Cook referenced in the latest quarterly earnings call a few days ago. iPhones are selling well in the country. I would expect the next “SE” iPhone anytime now, and it’ll add another pricing dynamic (usually, value for money; that should continue) to the iPhone portfolio.
It has been a while too. The previous iPhone SE was released almost 3 years ago. The era of the Touch ID home button has since passed. Expect some spec parity with the present iPhone 16 line-up, which should give it the baseline for Apple Intelligence.
Mind you, these numbers would barely include the latest line of flagships that I referenced earlier. Oppo perhaps had a bit more time with the Find X8 Pro in the market, but it is the next set of results that’ll tell us how the Vivo X200 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra fared.
There are stories of despair too within this space. None of which surprise me. Transsion Group, which basically is the company that sells phones under the Itel, Infinix, and Tecno brands, has recorded a 13% decline year-on-year.
The thing here is, as we crystalball the next few quarters, smartphone makers will have to find that alignment between what buyers actually want (that is a solid spec sheet, and photography performance, to name a few) versus what they think they need (artificial intelligence, solely). The latter will get conversations started but is unlikely to sell a lot of phones on its own accord. But it is quite easy to get caught up in the whole AI excitement. We’ll see how this pans out. Over to Xiaomi next. I have high hopes for the Xiaomi 15 and Xiaomi 15 Ultra phones (if at all that naming scheme continues), expected in a few weeks from now.
Vishal Mathur is the technology editor for HT. Tech Tonic is a weekly column that looks at the impact of personal technology on the way we live, and vice-versa. The views expressed are personal.
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