The world's largest phone manufacturer, Samsung regains its top position in the premium category in India. Previously, Samsung has been toppled by the Chinese manufacturer – OnePlus – for the past three consecutive quarters. Currently, the 30K+ price space is soaring more than ever with entries from Vivo, Oppo, Huawei and Google also joining in, and Apple cutting prices to gain market share, giving many options for potential customers.
A fresh report published by Counterpoint revealed that the latest launched Samsung Galaxy S10 series has helped the company retrieve its top position. As per the report, the newly launched Galaxy S10 lineup – S10e, S10 and S10 plus – helped Samsung dethrone OnePlus in Q1 of 2019. Albeit, OnePlus 6T was still the best-selling phone in the premium category, so it's not all bad news for the Chinese company.
Check out the graph how OnePlus toppled Samsung, and how Samsung bounced back.
If we talk about market share percentage, the report cited that Samsung had a 44% market share in the high-end segment in March end, followed by OnePlus at 26% and Apple with 19%. However, in the last quarter of 2018, OnePlus held the pole position with a 36% market share, Apple was at 30% and Samsung had a 26% share.
The report further revealed that the top three premium smartphone manufacturers – Samsung, Apple and OnePlus – are holding 90% of the market in Q1 of 2019 as compared to 95% in Q1 of 2018. Remaining 10% of the stack is shared by the companies like Huawei which have gained traction based on the Mate and P-series smartphones. Another highlighted point in the report is a decline in Apple's market share in India due to excessive pricing.
But Apple started local assembly of certain iPhone models and it is expected to relieve of the 20% import duty. This will help the company to recover its market share.
As the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro launch is close, the Chinese company could do counter-attack to retrieve its pole position. The devices are all set to launch on May 14. It remains to be seen how well these devices perform in the market and help the company to regain the top position in the premium category.
