State Of India’s Used Phone Market: Xiaomi Leads The Way While Ladies Are Holding On To Their Phones

The Indian smartphone market has rebounded pretty dramatically in the quarters following the Coronavirus induced slowdown and the nationwide lockdowns in H1 2020, and that has given the pre-owned smartphone market a big boost as well. In the latest of the User Behavior Whitepaper, Cashify which is India’s leading re-commerce marketplace, says that the mid-tier segment has seen the highest growth. This is the price band of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 and a lot of the growth across used smartphones has been seen because of the requirements of work from home and online classrooms. Cashify says that in the pre-owned smartphone space, Xiaomi phones are most popular followed by Apple, Samsung, Motorola, Vivo and Oppo. Mi phones lead with 26% share while Apple follows with 20% share and Samsung completes the top three with 16% share.

The IDC Quarterly Mobile Tracker had said that in Q3 2020, a record 54.3 million units were shipped in the quarter which ended September, making India the only market in the top three in the world to register positive growth. That trend has continued through into 2021 as well, with research firm Counterpoint’s numbers indicating that India’s smartphone shipments grew 23% to reach over 38 million units in Q1 2021, compared with the same period last year. IDC also says that in Q1 2021, Xiaomi continues to lead with 272.% market share in India. With that as the backdrop, Cashify’s User Behavior Whitepaper adds the perspective that the pre-owned smartphone space is seeing more users upgrading to another used phone within 14 to 18 months of purchasing the previous one. The availability of No Cost EMIs remains an important criteria.

The whitepaper throws up some interesting usage trends too. Apple iPhones in the used space are very popular in the age group of 25 to 34 years, with 71% of the buyers being male. The same age demographic also has a strong preference for Samsung phones, and again, skewed towards a preference for male buyers (82%) and popular purchases in Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Smartphone brand OnePlus has garnered a large chunk of sales that are in the Rs 30,000 or more price band, with Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru showing a preference for OnePlus phones. Xiaomi, which is the most popular brand in the preowned smartphone space, gets a large chunk of its buyers from the 18 to 24 years age group, with Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad seeing the maximum sales.

In 2020, Cashify says that the average selling price of a phone on their platform was Rs 4,217. Most phones sold by existing users, had been in service for around 3 years. It turns out that more males sold their phones (80%), compared with females (20%) who seemed to hold on to their phones for longer. As many as 40% of the around 4,000 respondents for the survey believe that the work from home and the online classroom requirements make it important to own the gadgets to meet these needs. And finally, something that we all suspected—the survey says that almost half of the pre-owned phone buyers bought a refurbished gadget purely because of affordability, compared to the price of a brand new phone purchase.

To draw parallels with the Cashify User Behaviour Study released in the summer of 2020 for the market trends of 2019, Xiaomi phones were the most popular back then too. At that time, Xiaomi had clocked a market share of 27% followed by Apple (16%) and Samsung (16%). In that comparison, it is clear that Mi phones continue to remain popular while more buyers are looking at pre-owned iPhones as a purchase option. Back then, we had reported that Apple iPhone (29%) purchases are very popular among women followed by Xiaomi (28%), but this year, more females are holding on to their existing phones, as the trends seem to suggest.

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