Fifth largest smartphone vendor: Reliance Jio

Reliance Jio has replaced Lava as the fifth largest smartphone vendor with huge shipments of 4G devices in the first quarter of 2016.

Not to forget that, according to IDC, shipments of key Indian vendors Micromax, Intex, and Lava put together dropped 20.4% sequentially in the smartphone market, which itself saw a sequential decline of 8.2%.

In terms of market leadership, Samsung maintained it with 26.6% in the smartphone market, which also saw a sequential decline of 8.2%. Though it has managed to maintain its leadership, the firm, however, saw a dip in shipments for both year-on-year and sequentially (quarter-on-quarter). Over 75% contribution came from its J-series smartphones as they continue to drive volumes for the vendor in both offline and online channels, as reported by IDC.

In Q1 2016, the second position was retained by Micromax with 6.9 percent growth over the same period last year. Followed by Intex at the third position, for it, shipments sequentially declined by 10% in Q1 2016 but grew marginally over last year. What was overwhelming was that Intex's 4G shipments almost doubled over the previous quarter strengthening its portfolio with over 15 active LTE models.

For Lenovo (including Motorola) the shipments declined 35.8% coming off from a sharp spike in the previous quarter. It slipped to the fourth position as sub-$150 segments saw a steep decline in the shipments.

Navkendar Singh, Senior Research Manager, IDC India, said, "This year is expected to unfold many transitional phases in the mobile phone ecosystem as more vendors begin local assembling/manufacturing and an increasing trend for higher data consumption owing to affordable 4G devices and data plans.”

The 4G smartphone market is lead by Samsung followed by Lenovo and Reliance Jio.

It is expected the smartphone market to gain the momentum in the upcoming quarters.