PREMIUM PHONES: OnePlus has 57% market share online, Samsung 4%

OnePlus, the sister company of Vivo and Oppo, totally dominates the online market for premium handsets with a 57% market share compared to just 4% for Samsung, the Chinese company said, quoting numbers from IDC.

The numbers are only for online sales, and do not include data for traditional sales through shops.

OnePlus, which was recently ranked as the brand with the highest level of customer satisfaction, only sells online and its phones are not available in traditional stores.

Samsung, on the other hand, gets the majority of its sales through offline retail channels.

Despite that, the numbers indicate the excellent reputation and brand built up by OnePlus in India over the last three years.

“In Q2 2017, the premium smartphone (Rs. 26,000 or $400 above) segment, witnessed OnePlus to become the market leader,” the company said.

Currently, it sells the OnePlus 3T and 5 models in India.

The second place for online sales was with Apple, which had a 37.8% share in the premium market.

OnePlus said sales of its phones jumped by three times in the first week of Amazon India’s Diwali sales compared to last year.

It also said that OnePlus 5 was the bestselling smartphone during the recent Amazon ‘Prime Day’.

The company said it will offer facilities such as freebies in the second round of the Amazon Great Indian sale that started today.

The OnePlus 3T will be available at Rs 24,999 along with a cashback of Rs 2000 for card payment.

It will also give zero cost EMI on both its models as well as up to Rs 3000 off on exchange of their existing smartphone.

OnePlus has been able to corner a large part of the market by focusing all its energies on one or two models a year and keeping prices low by dispensing with traditional marketing practices and relying entirely on social media and online retail channels.