The smartphone market in Bangladesh experienced extra-ordinary growth in first quarter of 2019, posted 45% growth during the first quarter of 2019 over last year. The findings came from latest research by Counterpoint’s Market Monitor Service. Samsung leapfrogged the leading brand Symphony in that quarter with significant growth and capturing the market share through launching various mid-range budget handsets.
Bangladesh Smartphone Market Share – Q1 2019
Source: Counterpoint Research Market Monitor
Reason of high growth was increase in the availability of locally manufactured devices. The volume of locally manufactured devices increased by 29% quarter-on-quarter (QoQ), and they now make up for 41% of Bangladesh’s smartphone market.
The research by Counterpoint found that, local brands in Bangladesh is still dominating the market over Chinese brands. However, the dynamic may shift as the Chinese brands are setting the assembly plants had a 39% market share in Q1 2019. Among the local brands, Maximus showed a huge growth of 793% YoY, driven by its affordable offerings in the BDT 2,000 – BDT 7,000 (US$25-US$75) price band. Maximus D7 was the second best selling model in Q1 2019, after Samsung Galaxy J2 Core. On the other hand, Chinese brands grew 38% YoY, grabbing a 33% market share, which was largely driven by the growth of Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo, which contributed to 65% of the overall shipments of Chinese brands.
The research also finds that, locally made handsets are proving to be a success as the prices of locally assembled devices are lower than that of the imported ones. Also, the defect ratio of the latest locally manufactured devices has also come down sharply in comparison to the earlier ones. The rise of locally manufacturing handsets shows government’s efforts to promote local manufacturing starts to pay off.
In terms of market share, Samsung leads all the way to reach top spot. The Korean giant’s shipments grew 203% YoY, helping it capturing the top spot for the first time in Bangladesh. It’s market share stood at 22%, while the former market leader, Symphony only had a 16% market share. Symphony, the former market leader, is now the second best selling smartphone brand in Bangladesh. New launches and boost in the local manufacturing were the reason behind Samsung’s growth. The Samsung Galaxy J2 Core was its top model. Expanding its portfolio also helped Samsung, as the newly introduced A-series smartphones dominated their respective price bands.
Transsion did well driven by strong shipments of iTel in below BDT 7,000 price range. A33 Android Go edition remained popular. As it scales up its local assembling, Transsion is looking forward to grow its market share with multiple brand strategy (iTel, Tecno and Infinix).
Almost all the Chinese brands had experienced significant growth in the first quarter, showing more market competitiveness in coming months. Xiaomi is becoming a dominant brand with 7% market share. The company’s shipments grew 165% YoY. Another Chinese brand Vivo grew at a stunning 1,133% YoY with new launches such as Y91C, Y91i. Huawei witnessed a resurgence in shipments, which grew 7% QoQ due to its Y series models. Huawei also offered discounts to customers purchasing handsets from Huawei authorized outlets. Customers buying smartphones from Robishop (an e-commerce platform from Telecom Operator Robi Axiata Limited) could also get the Robi and Airtel bundle.
Even the local brands of Bangladesh had a strong performance during Q1 2019. Symphony, Walton and Maximus were part of the top five local smartphone brands by market share.
With the advent of 4G services, shipments of LTE capable smartphones grew 117% YoY. The availability of LTE capable smartphones is constantly increasing. Samsung alone contributed to 34% of the total LTE capable device shipments, followed by Xiaomi with an 11% share. In terms of system-on-a-chip (SoC) vendors, MediaTek is the leader with a 54% market share, followed by Qualcomm at 15%. Qualcomm powered smartphone shipments grew 116% YoY, largely driven by Samsung, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, and Huawei. Samsung contributed 36% of shipments of Qualcomm powered chipsets, followed by Xiaomi, which contributed 33%.
However, the finding by Counterpoint being challenged by local manufacturers claiming the local manufacturing numbers didn’t captured in the market share analysis which is meeting 30% of the market demand.
So far five plants have started assembling locally, Samsung, Symphony, Walton, Transsion and Al Amin Brothers are those manufacturers. Currently, there is 32 percent tax on handset import. The tax comes down to 18 percent for local assembling, while for manufacturing it is about 13 percent. This tax structure prompted the smartphone companies to seek out licenses from the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission for local assembling of devices. Those five have got their assembly lines rolling and in the first quarter of this year supplied 12.63 percent of the total demand for 76 lakh units of handsets.
Disclaimer: The image posted here collected from web sources, used for presentation purpose only.
