Chinese smartphone maker and electronics giant Xiaomi has emerged as the top market share holder in top 50 cities in India in Q3 according to the

IDC released the ‘India Monthly City-Level Smartphone Tracker’ for Q3 to track the percentage of smartphone sales in Q3. According to the report, Top 50 cities account for about the 50 percent smartphone sales in comparison to 23 percent in Q2.

Metro cities of India including Delhi and Mumbai amount for about 1/4th of the sale while Tier I cities continue to be ‘the key volume driver’ of sales with 29 percent sequential growth. IDC stated that Jaipur, Bhopal, and Gurgaon from the Tier II cities came out ‘as the fastest growing cities’ with each city observing a bump of more than 40 percent in terms of sales as compared to the previous quarter.

The report noted that the primary reason for the growth in the sales in Tier I and Tier II cities is because of the availability of affordable mobile data plans and increasing 4G penetration across the country.

Himanshu Jain, Market analyst with IDC India stated, “Mega-online sale(s) by prominent e-tailers acted as a catalyst for the robust growth across city tiers with e-tailers now contributing around 40 percent of the market in top 50 cities of India.”

IDC confirmed that the companies are pursuing ‘aggressive’ expansion of their ‘offline’ channels to ensure that they can keep up with the demand while matching the retail spends and distribution strength of players like Samsung, Vivo and Oppo. The report details the growth and decline of all the major smartphone players in the top 50 cities.

According to the report, Xiaomi grew 120 percent in Q3 with Redmi Note 4 contributing to about 40 percent of total sales for the company. Redmi Note 4 was also the ‘highest selling model within the top 50 cities of India.’ IDC highlighted that Xiaomi’s efforts at expanding its offline reach with the help of Mi Stores and ‘Preferred Partner’ programmes have helped the company grow.

Samsung slipped to the second spot despite observing 15 percent quarterly growth. The company continued to rule a number of cities because of its reach and penetration with Galaxy J2, J7 Max, J7 Prime and J7 Nxt account for about 50 percent of sales.

Lenovo maintained its third spot with 8 percent quarterly growth as New Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai accounting for 40 percent of the total sale. Moto E4, Lenovo K6 Power and K6 Note drove the majority of the sales for the company along with Motorola sub-brand. Other players like Oppo and Vivo came at fourth and fifth spot respectively. Oppo moved up as an increasing number of customers chose F3 and F3 Plus as their smartphones with recently launched A71 gaining momentum.Vivo slipped to the fifth spot because of reduced channel spends