NEW DELHI: Fuelled by roll-out of LTE networks, smartphone shipments in India grew 23 pct in the third quarter of 2016, outpacing the modest 5 pct growth notched by global smartphone market, says a report. 

"The smartphone shipments in India grew a healthy 23 pct annually in Q3 2016 compared to the global smartphone market which grew modest 5 pct," the report by Counterpoint Research said.

Commenting on the findings, Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research said that India witnessed record quarter for smartphone and featurephone shipments during Q3 2016. 

The demand for the feature phones also saw an uptick to satisfy the sizeable population which have been laggards in adoption of smartphones, Chauhan added. 

"...Out of all the smartphones being sold, almost seventy pct of them are now LTE capable with eighty pct of those LTE smartphones sporting VoLTE (Voice over LTE) capabilities signaling a significant polarization among the Indian demographics," Chauhan pointed out. 

While bulk of the first-time smartphone users were mostly using Indian or Samsung branded smartphone, the aggressive entry and growth of Chinese brands have prompted most of these users to upgrade to affordable but better spec smartphones, Pavel Naiya, analyst at Counterpoint said. 

This has been possible because of Chinese brands adopting a direct and exclusive e-commerce channel strategy to be cost competitive. 

Samsung still dominates the feature phone and smartphone market but its overall market share declined sequentially by 4 pct points even though it registered a record quarter in shipment volumes in India, the Counterpoint statement said.

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