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India’s Smartphone Market Just Split In Two: Cheap Phones Are Collapsing, Rs 50,000-Plus Mobiles Are Booming
India’s smartphone market fell 10% in Q2 2026, but affordable phones collapsed 88% while Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh phones grew 72%. Full CMR data and analysis.
CyberMedia Research’s latest quarterly review puts India’s smartphone market down 10 percent year on year in the April to June quarter. Read only that headline number and you would assume a uniform slowdown. The detail underneath tells a sharper story: the market is not shrinking evenly, it is splitting apart.
Affordable phones fell off a cliff. Phones between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1 lakh grew by nearly three-quarters.
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The Divide
| Segment | YoY change |
|---|---|
| Affordable | Down 88 percent |
| Value for money | Down 30 percent |
| Premium, above Rs 25,000 | Up 54 percent |
| Super premium, Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh | Up 72 percent |
CMR’s senior analyst Menka Kumari calls this a widening gap in consumer demand. That undersells it. An 88 percent collapse at the bottom against a 72 percent surge near the top, in the same quarter, in the same country, is not a gap. It is two different markets sharing one set of retail shelves.
Why The Bottom Fell Out
CMR attributes the overall slowdown to cautious consumer spending, rising component and device costs, longer replacement cycles and retailers working down inventory rather than restocking aggressively.
The component cost story is the one doing most of the damage at the affordable end specifically. DRAM and NAND flash prices have risen sharply through 2026 as AI data centre demand has absorbed manufacturing capacity that would otherwise supply consumer devices. Memory makes up a disproportionate share of a cheap phone’s bill of materials, which is why a global chip shortage shows up in India as an 88 percent collapse in one segment while barely denting another.
CMR’s own forecast expects this to continue rather than ease. Rising component and device costs are expected to keep the sub-Rs 15,000 segment under pressure through the second half of 2026, while the premium and super premium segments are projected to grow a further 50 percent over the same period.
Why The Top Is Booming
Kumari’s more interesting observation is about what is actually driving the super premium surge, and it is not the phones themselves.
Her assessment is that financing structures, zero-cost EMI, trade-in offers and consumer credit, have become the deciding factor in premium upgrades, ahead of AI features or camera hardware. In other words, people are not necessarily richer or more impressed by this year’s flagships. They are being offered easier ways to spread the cost of buying one.
That reframes the premium boom considerably. A 72 percent jump driven by financing terms is a different, and more fragile, story than one driven by genuine demand for better cameras or on-device AI.
Market Share
| Brand | Q2 2026 share |
|---|---|
| Vivo | 18.1 percent |
| Samsung | 17.9 percent |
| Oppo | 13.1 percent |
| Xiaomi, including Poco | 12.6 percent |
| Realme | 9.9 percent |
Vivo holds the top spot despite shipments falling 15 percent year on year, which is only possible because rivals fell further. Xiaomi recorded the smallest decline among the top five at just 2 percent, and the Redmi A7 Pro 5G led its shipments.
IDC’s numbers
Worth a caveat here. IDC’s own Q2 2026 tracker, published around the same time, shows a steeper overall decline of 11.1 percent and puts Vivo’s share slightly higher at 18.4 percent, with unit shipments down 13.9 percent. Realme’s decline in IDC’s data runs to 14.2 percent.
The two research firms broadly agree on direction and on which brands are winning share versus losing it. They differ on the exact magnitude, which is normal given different sampling and estimation methods. Treat the precise percentage points as indicative rather than exact, and trust the pattern both firms are independently showing.
What Each Major Brand Actually Shipped
| Brand | YoY shipment change | Leading model | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vivo | Down 15 percent | V70 | Retains volume leadership despite the decline |
| Samsung | Not specified | Galaxy A07 (value), Galaxy S26 Ultra (premium) | S26 Ultra alone made up 9 percent of Samsung’s shipments |
| Oppo | Down 12 percent | A and K series | Combined 57 percent of shipments, concentrated above Rs 15,000 |
| Xiaomi, including Poco | Down 2 percent | Redmi A7 Pro 5G | Smallest decline of the top five |
| Apple | Not specified | iPhone 16 series | iPhone 16 at 50 percent of shipments, iPhone 17 already at 35 percent |
| OnePlus | Up 28 percent | Nord CE 6 | The only major brand reporting growth |
| Transsion | Down 32 percent | – | Hit hardest by the affordable segment collapse |
Two entries in that table are worth sitting with.
Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra alone accounting for 9 percent of the company’s total shipments is a striking concentration in a single flagship model, and it lines up precisely with the super premium surge described above.
Apple’s split is equally telling. Barely a year after launch, the iPhone 17 series already represents 35 percent of Apple’s India shipments against 50 percent for the iPhone 16. CMR reads that as a fast-maturing upgrade cycle sustained by strong premium demand, which is a polite way of saying Apple’s customers in India are now upgrading almost as fast as anywhere else in the world.
OnePlus is the outlier worth flagging on its own. In a quarter where every other major brand either shrank or was not specified, OnePlus grew 28 percent, led by the Nord CE 6. That places it against a mid-range positioned firmly in the value-for-money band that collapsed 30 percent industry-wide, which makes its growth harder to explain by segment trends alone and more likely a story about OnePlus specifically taking share from weaker rivals.
Qualcomm Vs MediaTek
| Chipset maker | Segment led | Share |
|---|---|---|
| MediaTek | Overall smartphone market | 46 percent |
| Qualcomm | Premium, above Rs 25,000 | 41 percent |
The split here mirrors the price segmentation almost exactly. MediaTek dominates the volume end of the market where shipments are collapsing, and Qualcomm leads the premium tier that is growing. Whichever chipmaker is more exposed to the affordable segment is more exposed to this downturn.
Feature Phones
| Segment | YoY change | Leader |
|---|---|---|
| 2G feature phones | Up 5 percent | Itel, 38 percent share, followed by Lava at 30 percent and HMD at 20 percent |
| 4G feature phones | Down 43 percent | – |
The 2G segment growing while everything above it in the feature phone category collapses is a genuine curiosity, and it points toward the most budget-constrained tier of buyers retreating even further down the price ladder rather than stepping up to a 4G device, let alone a smartphone.
Key Questions Answered
Ask News18Affordable phone prices are expected to increase due to rising component costs, particularly for memory chips like DRAM and NAND, which are in high demand for AI technology. This has led to brands reducing the availability of entry-level models and increasing prices across various smartphone segments.
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Original source: https://www.news18.com/movies/movie-reviews/
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