One of the most important things that tech giants need to master in order to conquer the world with their products is to capture them in large developing markets. Their purchasing power is really huge and can often turn the imaginary hands of the scales in your favor. Samsung is successful with this strategy with its phones almost all over the world. However, there are markets where the first problems are starting to appear.
One of the "problematic" markets is also starting to be in India. Although Samsung has been dominating this for many years, recently its certain position has been noticeably weakening. This is mainly due to the huge competition from Chinese companies that offer their phones with great equipment at a fraction of the price. One of them is the Chinese Xiaomi, which dangerously caught up with Samsung in the third quarter of this year.
Data from Counterpoint shows that Samsung continues to hold a large 23% share of the Indian market. However, Xiaomi is breathing heavily on its back with its 22% and is probably counting down the last days and months to a big success in the form of surpassing the South Korean giant.
However, Xiaomi's success was more or less predictable. The company makes no secret of its ambitions to become the largest smartphone manufacturer and the sales it has in the world, it is briskly meeting its goal. Just to give you an idea, last year its share in the world market was around six percent, this year it is 22 percent. If we were to focus purely on the Indian market, we would find that three of the five best-selling smartphones are Xiaomi models. In contrast, Samsung has only one phone in the TOP 5 ranking.
So we'll see how the whole battle of the giants develops. However, it is already more or less clear that Samsung will lose its lead in India. The question is whether Samsung can keep up with him or not.
