Xiaomi’s aggressively priced suite of high-spec handsets and market expansion strategy enabled it to take the top spot in the world’s biggest smartphone market after China, said Tarun Pathak of Counterpoint Research. The Chinese company, which is exploring a public listing and is now valued at close to $100 billion, entered India just over three years ago. Its strategy there has so far rested on flash sales on leading homegrown e-commerce player Flipkart and U.S. tech giant Amazon.com’s Indian site, an approach that helped it snatch market share without have to spend heavily on marketing. Counterpoint pegged Xiaomi’s smartphone market share in India at 25 percent in the fourth quarter based on shipments, ahead of Samsung’s 23 percent. Lenovo, Oppo and Vivo came in behind them, each with about 6 percent market share.
