Last year, Chinese phone manufacturing companies in India suffered a major setback. For the first time in the last fiscal year, sales of Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi, Oppo, OnePlus and Realme declined in India.
Their performance dragged down the total revenues of the nine largest Chinese electronics companies operating in India by 4.5% in FY25, data from regulatory filings last month showed. This was the first time that Chinese companies recorded a decline in revenue in India. Last year, they had registered a growth of 42%.
Retail value decreased
Tarun Pathak, research director of market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research, said that in 2025, the value share of handsets priced below Rs 20,000 in India’s smartphone market will decline to 29% from 38% two years ago. He said that this has affected Chinese brands in the most competitive price segment. According to Counterpoint, the retail value share of Chinese smartphone brands in India is expected to decline from 54% in 2023 to 48% in 2025. However, their market share in terms of sales remained between 73% to 75%. Industry experts and executives indicated that despite growth in demand for higher priced handsets, the general and mid-segment may remain sluggish. Meanwhile, prices are increasing in the smartphone segment due to the sharp increase in the price of memory chips. The weak performance of big smartphone companies dragged down the overall sales of Chinese electronics brands, even though this segment is a major contributor to the total revenue.
Apart from smartphones, the major electronics segment saw good growth, with Haier, Lenovo and Midea leading the way, and high-end home appliances saw strong demand. Chinese handset brand Vivo, which has several high-end models in its portfolio, also showed good growth with an 11% increase in revenue compared to the previous fiscal year. Apple and Samsung, with their premium products, took advantage of changing consumer preferences to capture value market share from top Chinese brands.
Increase in iPhone sales
iPhone maker Apple’s sales in India increased by 18% to Rs 79,378 crore in FY25, while Samsung’s sales increased by 12% to Rs 1.11 lakh crore. Korean home appliance maker LG Electronics also registered a growth of 14% in FY25. Mohit Yadav, founder of AltInfo, a business intelligence company that analyzes RoC filings, said Vivo’s growth was almost the same as Samsung’s, while the growth of other Chinese companies was less. He said that the market is moving towards expensive products and strong offline retail and Vivo is the only Chinese brand whose figures show that it is keeping pace with this change.
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