India is a country with over a billion people. The Indian market is one of the fastest-growing smartphone markets worldwide. Hence the smartphone market is a huge opportunity for phone manufacturers to tap into the ever-growing consumer need. Even though the market experienced a decline in growth in 2020 due to Covid-19, the market is expected to grow in the coming years. In 2021 smartphone shipments are picking up and are expected to fix all the logistical problems.
Last week, when LG announced its exit from the smartphone business, it created a huge buzz in the smartphone industry. Other smartphone brands are always looking for a way to capture that slice of the pie. One thing they need to fill the void created by LG is to understand the current status of the smartphone market and find out where LG had its presence. We decided to conduct a competitive analysis of the smartphone market and help those who are curious about its current state.
At Datahut, we’re conducting an analysis of the smartphone market using the data we extracted from Flipkart using our cloud-based web data extraction platform.
A download link for the Indian Smartphone Market data used for the analysis is provided at the end of the blog.
In this blog, we use this market data to provide insights into the Smartphone industry covering the following aspects:
Data collection and preparation
Which brands have more inventory in the Smartphone market
Pricing insights from the Smartphones market
Promotional insights from the Smartphones market
This analysis is created primarily for pricing analysts and marketers at eCommerce companies.
Data Attributes
The following data fields were extracted for each smartphone:
Product_name: While we’ll be calling it “product name”, some people may commonly refer to it as the title of the product. An example would be the Micromax Canvas Elanza A93 (Black Silver, 4 GB)
Product_url: Product URL is the URL to the page which contains the product information. Eg ( https://www.flipkart.com/xolo-t1000-black-4-gb/p/itmdmnpqsasmcvsp?pid=MOBDMKDAKQGCYZ6D ),
Brand: Brand is the name of the brand, for example Samsung. Under the brand Samsung, they sell 243 models. Some of them are variants of the same model but for the sake of analysis we consider them as two distinct models and they have different UPC’s.
Sale_price: Sale price is the price at which the product is available on Flipkart for sale. It is the price after the discounts.
MRP: MRP is the maximum retail price of the product.
Discount_percentage: Discount percentage is the discount offered by the brand for that particular product.
Ram: The Ram Capacity of the smartphone
Number_of_ratings: The total number of star ratings given to that particular product.
Number_of_reviews: The total number of reviews given to the product by the user.
UPC: UPC or universal product code is the unique identification for a model.
Star rating: Star rating is the average star rating of the product.
The Tools for Analysing Scraped Data
For analyzing the data scraped above, we loaded the data into open refine - a tool used to clean unfiltered data. After the cleaning process, we loaded the data into a MySQL database and connected it to Metabase. Metabase is an open-source and unbelievably user-friendly tool to work with databases. You can use their UI for simple tasks and the native SQL editor to perform complex tasks.
Interesting findings from the pricing pattern
Here is some interesting analysis we found from the data.
The average sale price for a smartphone is Rs 17,616.58
The average MRP for a smartphone is Rs 19,350.06
The most expensive smartphone is SAMSUNG Galaxy Fold 2 (Mystic Bronze, 256 GB)
The least expensive smartphone is HPL A35 (Black, 512 MB)
Out of the total inventory of 1513 products, 1214 products, or 80% are priced under Rs 20,000.
There are 155 products priced under Rs 5000.
15 brands have only one product listed and 10 brands have only 2 products listed.
There are 26 products listed with a sale price of Rs 9999.
Want to know more? Read on
The brands in the Indian smartphone market
There are 67 companies selling Smartphones on the Indian smartphones market. Samsung leads the category with listings under 243 unique UPC’s which are 16.06 % of the total inventory. Redmi (10.51 %), OPPO (8.20%), and VIVO (7.80%) are closely trailing behind. A snapshot of the market share can be found in the chart below.
If you need the complete picture with an interactive visualization - Click here
Distribution of smartphones across different price segments
Let us now take a look at how smartphones are distributed across different price segments. For the sake of analysis let’s put them into four price buckets and see how the products are distributed
The Sales Price between Rs 0 and 20,000 - The affordable smartphone segment.
The Sales Price between Rs 20,000 and 40,000 - The economy smartphone segment.
The Sales Price between Rs 40,000 - 60,000 - The business smartphone segment.
The Sales Price above Rs 60000 -The premium smartphone segment
1. The affordable smartphone segment
This segment comprises 1215 smartphones which comprise 80% of the total smartphones market share. The maximum number of purchases are taking place within this segment. People shopping within this segment are looking for a budget-friendly smartphone with good features and decent performance.
The Doughnut chart below shows a snapshot of the segment.
Samsung leads this segment with 13.17 % of the total inventory (160 products) in this category. Redmi is the next closest competitor with 11.77% ( 143 products).
If you need the complete picture with an interactive visualization - Click here
2. The economy smartphone segment
The economy smartphone segment is where people look for smartphones with better features and excellent processing power. There are only 182 smartphones in this category and that is just 12% of the entire smartphone market.
The Doughnut chart below shows a snapshot of the segment
Samsung leads this segment again with 23.63% of the total inventory. Oppo beats redmi to grab the no. 2 spot and Vivo seized the third position. Note that only 17 out of the 67 brands in the category compete in this segment.
If you need the complete picture with an interactive visualization - click this link
3. The Business Segment
The business category is where people look for the most powerful phones with business-class features. There are only 49 products in the category and that makes up just 3.2% of the total market. Only 9 brands compete in this category.
The Doughnut chart below shows a snapshot of the segment.
The Apple iPhone dominates the market in this category with a 36.73% market share, and Samsung is trailing with 28.57%. A curious case in this category is the presence of LG which announced its withdrawal from the smartphone business.
If you need the complete picture with an interactive visualization - Click this link.
4. The premium smartphone segment
This is the segment with phones having extraordinary features, unbeatable cameras, and extremely high processing power. There are only five brands competing in this category.
The Doughnut chart below shows the market share of the segment.
Apple iPhone dominates this segment with more than 55% of the segment's inventory share. Samsung trails behind with a 37% market share.
The Average Sales Price across brands in the smartphones category
Pricing has a lot to do with the way brand positions themselves in the market. Let’s take a look at the average sales price across different brands.
See the snapshot as a doughnut graph below. For the detailed interactive visualization click this link.
1. The average Promotions across brands in the smartphones category
Discounts are a great way to hook the consumers into buying a product. Let us see which brand offers more discounts. Out of 67 brands in the segment - only 38 of them are offering any kind of discount. In the visualization below we are plotting only those brands which offer discounts.
2. The average of star ratings across brands in the smartphones category.
The average star rating of a brand is an essential metric considered by a consumer before making a purchase decision. Companies usually monitor their competitor’s product’s star ratings to assess consumer satisfaction. See the interactive visualization below
Download the Data: Download the data we used for the analysis from this link
The above analysis is just the tip of the iceberg. At Datahut we help market research companies get all kinds of data in every industry for conducting competitive research. If you need web data from another category for analysis, Contact Datahut