India Overtakes the US To Become the World's Second Largest Smartphone Market (techcrunch.com)

A reader shares a report: Move over America, India is now the world's second largest smartphone market. That's according to a new report from Canalys which claims smartphone shipments in India crossed the 40 million mark for the first time in Q3 2017 courtesy of 23 percent annual growth. That means that India has overtaken the U.S. on sales with only China ahead of it. Given the huge gulf in populations -- India's stands at over 1.3 billion while the U.S. is around 320 million -- the move had been expected for some time, but recent developments, including demonetization in late 2016, set progress back during recent quarters. "This growth comes as a relief to the smartphone industry. Doubts about India's market potential are clearly dispelled by this result," Canalys analyst Ishan Dutt said in a statement.

Comments

Re:I DROPPED MY PHONE IN THE LOO

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously you aren't in India. Otherwise you would say "I dropped my phone on the sidewalk"

Shocking I tell you

[sjbe]

Wow, the country with the second largest population is the second largest market. Who could believe it?

Re:Shocking I tell you

[Joce640k]

Relax: The USA's smartphones still have bigger screens and generate much more CO2 when you use them.

Re:Shocking I tell you

[parkinglot777]

But I still don't know why it is a news here... If the population of the country is 4x times the U.S. population, why wouldn't it be a surprise if their sale become higher at some point? Or they (phone companies) are trying to encourage Americans to own 2+ smartphone each now, so that Americans can brag about being the largest or second largest again?

Re:Shocking I tell you

[slew]

But I still don't know why it is a news here... If the population of the country is 4x times the U.S. population, why wouldn't it be a surprise if their sale become higher at some point? Or they (phone companies) are trying to encourage Americans to own 2+ smartphone each now, so that Americans can brag about being the largest or second largest again?

Of course we have a "cell-phone gap" and this time it is more than likely actually real.

Then again, just like our "fast-food" culture, I have no idea why they would be willingly following us down this rabbit hole given the potential consequences...

I say we cede the high ground to China and India on this front...

Re:Shocking I tell you

[Gussington]

Wow, the country with the second largest population is the second largest market. Who could believe it?

When you look at how much poverty there used to be in India, it is a sign that America's place in the world is slowly being eroded. And this should be a concern for all of us who like things like free and democratic and English speaking. With China and India rising in power, the proliferation of tyranny and oppression rises with it.

But ignore all that, Hillary had her own email server. That's really what we all need to worry about instead...

Market Saturation is a funny beast

[H3lldr0p]

Chasing the dragon's tail of profits makes companies do funny things. Saturating a market for one. Make sure everyone who wants one has one and then what? You release a new version. Fine but what features are you going to sell it on? And what happens when you run out of new features? From what we've seen so far, you start removing things from the base product and hope no one remembers it in a year or two when you reintroduce it.

Or you jump ships and find a market that's not saturated to the same extent and do the whole thing over there. Never stopping once to think the consequences of your actions through. Why? Because profits.

Re:Market Saturation is a funny beast

[Anonymous Coward]

From what we've seen so far, you start removing things from the base product and hope no one remembers it in a year or two when you reintroduce it.

Coming soon: headphone jack on the iPhone... but only on the high end version.

Tech Support

[Zorro]

So where do they out source their Tech Support to? ;)

Re:Tech Support

[sinij]

Alabama

Re:Tech Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Red religious states because in a couple of more years they are all going to be educated to 3rd world standards

Re:Tech Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Philippines, the call center capital of the world, since 2010.

Re:Tech Support

[dj245]

All the taxi drivers in Delhi are named Kevin.

The big meatball hanging out there

[93 Escort Wagon]

Given the claim at the end of the summary, I went to RTFA to see if these were el-cheaply phones or the kind of phone manufacturers actually would want to sell. Unfortunately Tech Crunch’s site seems to be totally borked on my smartphone’s display... so I still don’t know the answer.

Re:The big meatball hanging out there

[pr0fessor]

They list Samsung as the most popular brand?

Revenue

[Thelasko]

The Indian smartphone market may be larger in unit volume. However, they are likely lower priced models. I suspect the US market is larger in terms of smart phone revenue, where people will line up to pay $1000 for the new iPhone.

Re:Revenue

[ctilsie242]

The Indian smartphone market being large makes sense because for a lot of people, that is their main computing device. Other countries, the smartphone is a secondary device and usually paired with a laptop or desktop, perhaps with a tablet as well.

What would be interesting is designing a smartphone from the ground up as a primary computing device. This would mean far more sophisticated backups (which are encrypted), ease of recovery over the air, even if one's ROM was corrupted, choices of ROMs, more flexibility in storage (one MicroSD card for internal secondary storage, one that would be external for backups, and at least 64-128 gigs of fast internal storage.) Battery replacement may be useful, but I'd assert that IP68 resistance would be more important, and a way to do an external battery case would be a better idea.

Software-wise, designing a phone around VMs, so one can have private stuff, work stuff, and general items in separate areas, switchable by varying authentication modes (fingerprint, face print, PIN, password, or some combination of the above.) That way, if one's "social network" VM got compromised, it is easily dumped, or restored back to a known safe snapshot. Ideally, it would be nice to have some deduplication capability present on the /system partition (if looking at an Android model), so multiple VMs take up as little space as possible, while still providing encryption and separation.

There is a lot of research a company could do, if making a phone as a primary computing device. Perhaps a wireless standard to allow charging, as well as streaming video, and using a HID, so the phone can be tossed on top of a dock, and it can function as a desktop, similar to the old Motorola Atrix line, but wirelessly.

Re:An irony (?)

[Lobachevsky]

Any CEO of Microsoft, even if they hired an orangutan, would have withdrawn from the phone market, because Windows Mobile is junk and you can't even convince illiterate people to get one instead of an Android.

Good. Smartphones cause brain damage.

[Seven Spirals]

Not being a huge fan of India, I'm fairly sanguine about the news. Smartphones are mostly an scourge on concentration and social skills. Let the Indians lap them up and poison their kids and culture with them, too. If they didn't they'd have more than just the H1B program helping them trash the American job market - they'd have an actual *advantage* (other than only being cheap, English speaking, and numerous like today).

Shitty measurement

[houghi]

India's stands at over 1.3 billion while the U.S. is around 320 million

That shows that it means nothing. It is like saying "China has more schools than Luxemburg".
What you need is at least comparing it per capita. and then we see the US in place 118 and India in place 158.

Re:An irony (?)

[ctilsie242]

Microsoft still makes money hand-over-fist in the mobile department with their patents. They really don't need to do much in that field other than sit back and take the licensing fees. Windows Mobile was a decent OS... but developers just won't bother with a third platform.

Ironically, before Android and iOS, WM was the most popular smartphone OS out there.

Re:An irony (?)

[Plus1Entropy]

He's also an American, so it's more like double-reverse irony.

Factor out the junk, US reclaims title

[edgedmurasame]

A bunch of low-end phones isn't exactly the way things go.

There is some trouble brewing.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

In India there is no standard universal ID that could be used to track you and find you. If you don't look like a foreigner you can disappear into the crowds and acquire an Indian identity and passport. So many people from Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Burma have done that. Government is trying to create something called Aadhar (meaning proof) to create a nationwide id system. Lots of opposition to Aadhar.

Government wants the cell phones to be tied to Aadhar. To combat terrorism, they say. Some states are opposing this.

This requirement could drag down phone sales and market size. Or a scramble to acquire more burner phones before the Aadhar tie up is completed.

By units but not revenue

[larryjoe]

The average selling prices in India are far lower than in many other countries, so India still has quite a ways (i.e., many years) to catch the US in terms of revenue. See this link for some idea of the units and revenues. [The link shows stats per region, but North America is dominated by the US, and emerging Asia is dominated by India.] The average selling prices in India, China, and the US are $180, $332, and $400, respectively.