N L Correspondent
For the smart phone industry, it has been a lacklustre quarter of CY2024, with sales falling by 3-4 per cent over the same period last year, according to Counterpoint Research projections.
However, with the launch of many new models in Q1 of CY24, overall shipments grew year-on-year by 10-12 per cent.
In CY23 shipments remained flat, ending the year with 152 million units.
Says Shilpa Jain, senior analyst at Counterpoint: “We are seeing a slow demand period in India's smart phone market from the beginning of the year.
“The momentum which one saw in the festival season and even afterwards could not sustain entering this year.”
Jain points out that though sales were very slow during January-February 2024, there was some uptick in demand in March around the time of Holi.
“Post the festive season, the increased replacement cycle and the absence of the government's money-infusing policies are some of the reasons for the slow demand,” she adds.
Companies expect Q2 of FY 25 to be better. “A lot of new phones were launched in Q1, but it takes a bit of time to show in the sales.
“We will see a positive impact on sales in Q2 and expect it to be better than the previous year,” says a top executive of a leading Chinese mobile phone brand.
The other challenge is the slowdown in the decline of 2G subscribers.
This has impacted smartphone sales as the expectation was that these subscribers would quickly upgrade to 4G phones.
According to Counterpoint, the decline of 2G subscribers in 2023 was only 22 per cent over the previous year, compared to 27 per cent in 2022 over 2021.
