Counterpoint Report: OnePlus Beat Samsung and Apple in India

According to statistics from recent market research firm Counterpoint, in the second quarter of this year, the Indian mobile phone market, Oneplus won 40% of the high-end mobile phone market share, surpassing the Apple and Samsung to take the top sweet spot.

Though, Apple has smashed the fiscal record by increasing its revenue by 17% but not able to beat the Oneplus in India. On the other hand, the Samsung S9 Plus even not near to recently launched Oneplus 6.

Nowadays, it is not easy to become a black horse and win the high-end mobile phone sales champion in the highly competitive Indian mobile phone market. So why is Oneplus leading the Indian high-end mobile phone market?

The performance of One plus in overseas markets has been very good. As a relatively early mobile phone brand in overseas markets, the reputation of Oneplus is quite good. When each product is released, it will attract a large number of users and already has a large user base overseas.

In the Indian mobile phone market, India is the second largest populous country after China. But in terms of the in-house development of smartphones is not at the par. Despite, it is one of the fastest growing and most competitive markets.

The Indian market is big and easily accepts any new innovation or product (if that is value for money) and Oneplus has shown its competitiveness in the high-end mobile phone market in the last one or two years. In the third quarter of last year, it has reached the second place in market share. Nowadays, it rose to the first position.

On the other hand, the success of Oneplus is also derived from the “comprehensive business strategy”. Samsung’s S9 series mobile phone released this year is similar in appearance to last year’s S8, and it is less attractive to users.

Apple is currently affecting sales because of TRAI spam control app deployment by the Indian government. At this time, OnePlus stood out in the fiercely competitive market with its outstanding design and top flagship configuration.

Of course, the success of a brand mainly depends on the product quality and design. OnePlus able to 40% of the high-end mobile phone market in India just because of that.

As the flagship product launched this year, both the appearance and the performance, OnePlus 6 can be said to be impeccable. First of all, in terms of appearance, the overall design continues to deliver the feel of premiumness along beautiful curves.

The glass structure of the smartphone also allows one to play to the extreme, along with black porcelain, crescent white and black ink colors added a fuel in the fire.

If you talk about the performance, it has most prominent high end features i.e Snapdragon 845 mobile platform and  8GB of large memory.

Almost all mobile phone brands launch mobile phone products in various high-end and low-end mobile phone markets, while one plus only one or two flagship products are launched each year, which means that one plus can put all the energy into it.

Coming to the main topic, which is the Counterpoint report and according to that premium smartphone market in India under 30k segment grew 19% annually and 10% sequentially in Q2 2018; because more consumers moving towards the flagship devices offered by the different smartphone manufacturers. The tendency of consumers purchasing the premium smartphone in 2018 increase because of the different lucrative offers such as Cashback, EMI, Data bundling and Trade-ins. Therefore, the overall premium smartphone segment grew 19% YoY during Q2 2018.

If you talk about the revenue of OnePlus; India contributes third part in its overall global revenue and that’s why India remains an important market for OnePlus.

OnePlus has achieved this because of strong mouth to mouth promotion and they know how to impact on social media to reach out the target user base, generally youngsters.

Samsung S9 series launched this year with a target to capture the premium market, still, Samsung got a cleaned sweep by the Oneplus and drag on the third position where it remains adhere, despite a strong promotion.

On the other hand, the Apple’s iPhone X and iPhone 8 in the second quarter not performed well because of the price and additional customs duty which almost burn the common pocket of an Indian consumer, even he thinks for Apple. However, according to the Counterpoint, the Apple keep trying to remove the odds and organizing its channel structure to get improve 2H 2018 in India.

counterpoint report 2018 Q2

Also, the market for premium phones is increasing but average consumers don’t want to go beyond the ₹ 40,000 and OnePlus is playing around this only; which is another reason for its success. Also, the trend of affordable premium phone skewed the rich consumers towards this price range and stagnating the area of Samsung and Apple smartphones. And to catch the same bullets other smartphone players like OPPO, Huawei, Vivo, and Google also looking to capture the sweet spot of 40K.

Counterpoint Report OnePlus Beat Samsung and Apple in India

Report source Counterpoint