SerpApi.Org
Estimated at only 4 percent by Omdia and a whopping 11 percent by Counterpoint Research, the global decline in smartphone shipments registered between April and June 2026 compared to the same timeframe of last year clearly doesn't come from China.
That's because, according to Omdia, the world's largest handset market was down a microscopic 2 percent in Q2, which makes it completely unsurprising to hear that the second biggest market is responsible for a year-on-year fall of no less than 10 percent.
Can you guess what top vendor improved its numbers even in this context?
Don't worry, I'm going to give you the answer. It's Samsung. Of course, we're not talking about a huge progress, but a small 2 percent gain in Indian Galaxy sales between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026 that was... almost enough to change the nation's number one vendor.
Ultimately, Vivo did manage to edge out Samsung, but if the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Z Flip 8 prove successful enough, the tiny 0.2 percent gap in market share could easily be cancelled at the end of the current quarter.
That 2 percent improvement in shipments, mind you, added more than 2 percent to Samsung's Q2 2025 market share, increasing the company's slice of the pie to 17.6 percent and widening the gap to bronze medalist Oppo.
In fourth place, Xiaomi (including Poco) essentially kept its 13 percent market share unchanged, while Realme grew slightly from 9.6 to 10 percent to consolidate its final position among India's top five smartphone vendors.
Wait, what about Apple?
Because India remains a fertile ground for affordable Android devices with respectable specs, iPhones are... not quite as popular here as in the US, Western Europe, or even China.
Of course, Apple is not as irrelevant in India as Samsung is, for instance, in China, but Cupertino's 7 percent share in this market dominated by Vivo with a 17.8 percent slice of the pie is definitely not a result that will put a big smile on newly appointed CEO John Ternus' face.
Curiously enough, iPhone 17 series demand in the region is described as "strong" and resilient, but Apple's overall Indian handset sales are still down 3 percent in Q2 2026 compared to the same period of the previous year.
And what about Nothing and Google?
The small British outfit founded by Carl Pei less than six years ago and the search giant that continues to struggle to be taken seriously in the global mobile hardware space are... obviously not among India's top five smartphone vendors as of June 2026.
But, believe it or not, Nothing's regional shipments are up 105 percent (!!!) from the April-June 2025 quarter, while Google's 68 percent year-on-year growth represents the largest improvement for an "ultra-premium" brand.
Basically, it looks like Pixel handsets are growing at a much more impressive pace than iPhones in India all of a sudden (although that's not an entirely fair comparison), while Nothing devices are outpacing... all other companies in the region.
Those are some decidedly impressive and totally unexpected achievements for the two brands, although they were obviously made possible by Google and Nothing's relatively low sales numbers registered prior to this period.
What's on the horizon?
Unfortunately, nothing good. That's because the "persistent" increases in memory and "other component" costs that led to "multiple rounds" of price hikes for smartphones from virtually all major (and minor) brands during the first half of 2026 are unlikely to have ended.
That means another round or two of price hikes could be coming by the end of the year, so as bad as India's 10 percent decline in Q2 smartphone sales might sound, things are likely to get even worse soon.
Of course, this nightmare scenario must end at some point, but for the time being, it's probably wise not to expect that to happen before 2027.
