Various smartphone manufacturers like Apple, HTC, LG, BlackBerry and Samsung have been aggressively pursuing the smartphone market in India. The smart phone market has been growing at over 160% year-on-year in India.

This growth rate is four times the global average, which is around 40%. Just to compare, China’s market is growing at 86%, Japan’s market is growing at 24% and the United States is growing at only 19% year-on-year. So in terms of the growth rates India is probably the fastest growing smartphone market.

There are several drivers to this rapid growth. One of the biggest factors is the large population of over 1.2 billion with a healthy mix of middle and upper-class citizens. There has also been a growing demand for consumer electronics after India’s economic liberalization.

Availability of 3G mobile Internet and easy recharge options add to the demand. Markets such as Japan, Europe and the United States are quite saturated when it comes of smart phones. Hence, smartphone, mobile manufacturers have been pursuing aggressive growth strategy quite heavily in the Indian and other emerging markets. The mature markets have been shrinking in terms of growth for the past few quarters.

Western Europe, for example, saw a drop of 4.2% year-on-year in terms of total smart phone shipments, according to a report by IDC. Apple’s iPhone has seen a drop in its market share in Western Europe from 25% to 20%. However, Apple has been showing growth in India. Apple has been pushing its iPhone through smaller local distributors and also has been introducing attractive installment schemes to offset the high cost of its iPhones.

Availability of telecom providers like Vodafone, Airtel, BSNL across all major towns, cities and villages in the country add to the demand. It is not just the big players like Samsung and Apple who have been capturing the Indian smart phone market. Smaller domestic players like Micromax, Spice and Karbonn(all Android OEMs) have been seeing rapid growth in market share due to their cost-effective handsets.

These local players have been growing at anywhere between 200% to 500% on year-on-year basis. Another advantage of these domestic players is that their handsets are built upon the android platform, which is hugely popular in India and captures an astonishing 89% market share.

They have a pretty dense distribution network to ensure availability in tier 1 and tier 2 towns and villages across the country. This gives them a huge advantage over Apple and Samsung who have to exercise more control over where their smart phones are sold in order to protect brand image.