"India has inched past the US to become the second largest smartphone market in terms of active unique smartphone user base in the world with the base crossing 220 million users. This speaks volume for the scale India market provides for any player in the mobile connected ecosystem," Counterpoint Research Senior Analyst Tarun Pathak said.
India still has a long way to go as the smartphone penetration of the total potential population is still below 30 per cent, he added.
"The Indian smartphone demand grew strongly during the holiday season in the Q4 2015 quarter. However, the consumer demand waned since mid-November leading to smartphone shipments decline 11 per cent sequentially," Counterpoint Research Research Analyst Pavel Naiya said.
However, LTE shipments grew sequentially, as more than one in two smartphone shipped was LTE capable, Naiya added.
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The quarter also saw rollout of marquee LTE services by couple of network operators including the soft launch by the much-awaited green field operator Reliance Jio.
During the fourth quarter, over 40 per cent of the mobile phones shipped were smartphones. Also, almost half of mobile phones sold during the quarter were "Made in India" with over 20 mobile phone brands now assembling their phones in India.
At the end of the December 2015 quarter, Samsung led the smartphone market with 28.6 per cent share, followed by Micromax (14.3 per cent), Lenovo (11.4 per cent), Intex (9.6 per cent) and Lava (6.8 per cent).