Xiaomi dethroned in India in fourth quarter by Samsung, Vivo after five years as top smartphone brand

Xiaomi shipments in India tumbled 40 per cent year on year in the fourth quarter after intensifying government scrutiny and a raid on its offices

The Chinese smartphone maker remained the top brand for all of 2022 despite having the steepest decline in shipments at 26 per cent

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Published: 6:00pm, 20 Jan 2023

Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi was dethroned in India for the first time in five years by Samsung Electronics and Vivo in the fourth quarter after poor online sales amid a declining handset market and increasing regulatory scrutiny.

A 40 per cent slump in shipments pushed Xiaomi to third place in the market after holding the top spot for 20 straight quarters, according to a report by Canalys on Thursday. Its 5.5 million units shipped gave Xiaomi 17 per cent of the market compared with 21 per cent for Samsung and 20 per cent for Chinese rival Vivo.

Samsung shipped 6.7 million units for the quarter, taking the lead in India for the first time since the third quarter of 2017. Still, its shipment numbers were down 21 per cent from the same quarter of 2021, as India’s smartphone market grappled with its first fourth-quarter decline, falling 27 per cent to 32.4 million units.

Vivo was up 13 per cent for the quarter, shipping 6.4 million units in the country.

“Xiaomi aimed to clear out inventory of its older models using the e-commerce channel. But, due to poor e-commerce festive sales performance, Xiaomi and Realme saw significant stockpiling of their products in online channels in [the fourth quarter of] 2022,” Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said in the report.

Realme, which was incubated by Oppo before spinning off into its own company, suffered the steepest year-on-year drop, falling 65 per cent to 2.7 million units. It came in fifth after being overtaken by Oppo, which rose 9 per cent to 5.4 million units.