Since when does 10 percent equate to a victory?
Before you call me an Apple “fanboy” or “shill”, hear me out when I say that the Cupertino-based tech giant is (one of) the biggest winners of Omdia’s newest India-focused smartphone market report.
One of the most important indicators of success when analyzing such figures is always year-on-year growth, and that’s a department where iPhones currently shine a lot brighter than Galaxy handsets (at least in India).
Yes, Vivo is the champion, but Apple is the biggest grower… of the top five.
Samsung, of course, remains ahead of Apple (as well as Xiaomi and Oppo) in second place, only yielding to gold medalist Vivo, which leads the market by a much wider margin after a solid 19 percent year-on-year progress of its own.
19 percent is not as impressive as 47 percent, though, not to mention the 53 percent and 66 percent surges of Motorola and Nothing respectively outside the top five vendors’ club.
Will Apple take the lead in Q4 2025?
Apple, mind you, barely managed to crack India’s top five for the first time ever between October and December of last year, following up that feat with a new record high Q3 result this year.
This graph definitely looks promising for Apple, but not that promising.
As for Vivo, its main strength apparently lies in a “balanced portfolio” and “aggressive retail programs”, though its healthy growth (and Apple, Motorola, and Nothing’s even bigger aforementioned surges) were not enough to help the market as a whole flourish.
Yes, Indian smartphone shipments are up from Q3 2024, but only by 3 percent, and analysts fear the Q4 numbers will be even less impressive, possibly leading to a “modest decline” in the region’s full-year results after a disastrous first quarter and a decent Q2.
Diversity is the key to success now
If there’s one thing to take away from today’s Omdia report, I believe that’s the lesson to be learned, with not just Vivo’s success story depending greatly on its expansive and “balanced” product lineup.
2025 is clearly not the best year on record for India’s smartphone market.
Of course, this lesson seems to apply to other markets in recent years too, from China to Western Europe and even (although to a smaller degree) the US.
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