Smartphone sales in India stalled in April due to a nationwide lockdown. Even the global smartphone market recorded a decline of 13 percent.
To prevent the effects of the worldwide coronavirus, the Indian government announced a nationwide lockdown on 24 March. The lockdown is then extended for a second time and the lockdown ending on May 3 will continue until May 17. Due to this, only essential goods are being made available, so that people follow the rules of social distancing. In such a situation, the lockdown had a huge impact on the tech industry.
Tech companies canceled many of their big events early in the lockdown. At the same time, according to the report, in April, the sale of smartphones in India was zero. COVID-19 smartphone companies have discontinued their services for the present time due to the nationwide lockdown. Even online service is providing only essential goods.
Counterpoint’s Associate Director Tarun Pathak told IANS that “Smartphone shipments have been zero in April and we are currently in lockdown amid uncertainty, so Q2 2020 is going to be a real challenge for smartphone makers in the country.” Pathak said that ‘we are hearing that during this period sales of essential goods are happening, but thousands of people are against the possible 11-12 million smartphone sales, which happens in a normal month”.
All smartphone manufacturer companies such as Samsung to Xiaomi and Realme stopped manufacturing and assembling their smartphones in March itself. Realme had announced a complete shutdown of its sales and manufacturing after the 21-day lockdown was announced.
Madhav Seth, Vice President of Realme said that as per the instructions of the government, operations in our Greater Noida factory in Uttar Pradesh have been stopped from March 21, with sales also halted. We also postponed the launch event of our Narzo series and some Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIOT) products that were scheduled for April.
Talking to IANS, he said that ‘great uncertainty comes on demand’. If the country’s economy and people’s income were disrupted, the demand for smartphones in 2020 may not be optimistic. We will need to further evaluate how the economy will improve upon the reopening of the market. ‘Let us say that while smartphone sales in India were zero in April, the global smartphone market declined by 13 percent.
