Smartphone sales unhurt by economic slowdown

New Delhi: The economic slowdown may have clipped sales of cars and biscuits in 2019, but smartphones bucked the trend as urban and rural users continued to buy, and even upgrade to, expensive handsets - a trend likely to pick up pace in the coming year.

The growth in smartphone adoption was further fuelled by the government's push to position the country as a global hub for manufacturing and coax Apple and other leading brands to produce and export more phones from India.

Experts say that phone shipment is expected to see high single digit to double-digit growth in India as smartphones aiding everything from shopping to banking to social media and, yes, perfect selfies!

Counterpoint Research Associate Director Tarun Pathak expects India's smartphone market to grow by 9 per cent this year, and in double digits (by 12-14 per cent) in 2020.

By 2022, over 700 million people are expected to have a smartphone in India, and over a billion devices will be sold over the next four-five years, he said.

A back of the envelope calculation shows that over 115 million units smartphones were shipped in India in the first three quarters of 2019 with Xiaomi, Samsung, vivo, Oppo and realme making up the top five tally.

Interestingly, there has been a significant rise in the average selling prices (ASP) of smartphones this year - rising from Rs 5,000-10,000 to Rs 10,000-15,000 now.