Smartphone ownership trends in India: 91mobiles Smartphone Buyers Insights Survey 2023

We present you with yet another edition of our Smartphone Buyers Insights Survey to give you an idea about people’s smartphone ownership and their preferred choice of brands. The mobile phone market in India witnesses tons of new launches every week or so across various price points allowing customers to choose from a large variety of options. We conducted a survey with over 15,000 participants to understand trends in smartphone ownership, brand loyalty, how people decide on a new smartphone, and so on.

In this article, we take a closer look at the trends in smartphone ownership and how they have changed since last year.

Trends in smartphone ownership

Here are the various smartphone ownership trends and takeaways from the 91mobiles Smartphone Buyers Insights Survey 2023.

Smartphone brands people own today

• Much like last year, Samsung is the most popular smartphone brand among the survey respondents with an ownership share of 18.4 percent, marginally higher than Xiaomi’s 13.1 percent share which takes up the second position.
• The brand which lost a significant ownership shape is Apple which went from second position last year down to the fifth position in our latest survey with 11.1 percent of respondents owning iPhones.

• Over the course of one year, both Samsung and Motorola managed to increase their ownership share by 1 percent and 0.7 percent respectively as compared to last year. This could be because of continuous smartphone launches in the budget and midrange segments from both brands.

• As per the survey data, Vivo and POCO also saw a slight growth of 0.5 percent each in terms of ownership. Just like Samsung and Motorola, both these brands also cater to a large audience across various price segments.

• OnePlus along with Apple seem to have taken a hit as both brands see a decline in ownership, as per the data in our Smartphone Buyers Insights Survey 2023. The popular youth-focused brand, Realme, has also lost buyers to other smartphone manufacturers as its ownership share declined slightly from 11.9 percent to 11.6 percent in one year.
• Players like ASUS and Nokia also witnessed an ownership decline which could be due to their dwindling focus on the Indian market.

Which smartphone brand do people want to own next

• Apple seems to be the most sought-after brand as close to about 20 percent of the survey respondents would like to upgrade to an iPhone in the next one or two years. Not too far behind is Samsung which is the next preferred smartphone brand of almost 19 percent of the survey takers.
• According to the final data from our Buyers Insights Survey 2022, OnePlus held the second position in terms of brand preference whereas, in the latest survey, the smartphone maker has been pushed to the third place with 14.4 percent share down from 15.2 percent from last year.
• There also seems to be a slight interest in Realme smartphones as the brand managed to become the fourth most preferred phone brand among the survey participants by overtaking Vivo from the previous year. However, this can’t be said for Realme’s rival brand Xiaomi as people seem to have become less intrigued by the company’s offerings over the course of the year.