4G smartphones: What brands should you be looking at

In top 5, Micromax is the only domestic company with 14% of market share.

The world's largest phone manufacturers, Samsung, Lenovo and Xiaomi were top 4G LTE (long term evolution) brands, in terms of demand and popularity in 2015, said Cyber Media Research report.

The report mentioned that during the year the total sales of LTE devices grew 17 times to touch 33 million units.

The 4G devices contributed smartphones (98%), tablets (0.9%) and data cards(1%) during the year.

Samsung, topped the list in terms of market share of both smartphones (35%) and tablet PC (63%), said the CMR report.

Moreover, Lenovo scored second with 21% of market share, followed by Xiaomi with 10% market share.

The only Indian company to make it in top 5 is Micromax with 14%, when global and Chinese brands were in leads, report added.

As per the report, Faisal Kawoosa, lead analyst at CMR Telecoms Practice, said that "We have now over 35 million users equipped with 4G-capable devices. 4G has come at a very opportune time to give impetus to the growth of devices market resulting in such high number growths."

"Contrary to 3G evolution, the ecosystem provisioning has been much rapid and smooth in case of 4G. To make the technology successful is now the onus of the operators by alighting the networks where they have already been set up," Faisal added.

According to an Assocham report, sale of smartphones in the country is likely to touch 160 million units in the financial year 2016-17 as compared to last fiscal's 100 million units.

Due to affordable prices of the smartphones, the sales have been increasing in the country, the industry body report said adding, in 2012-13 it was 44 million units and by 2015-16 it had more than doubled to 100 million units.

"With in-built camera and other Internet-enabled features, sales of smart phones in India are set to shoot up to 160 million in FY17 from 100 million in FY16," the Assocham study said.

Source: techgig.com