Cell-ing point

Jaipur city is in the race to become one of the leading cities for smartphone sales as at this point it is ranked 4th in Tier II cities across the country by a popular data analysis website. Moreover, Pink City has risen from  5th position in second quarter of 2017-18.

In addition to this, the city is also ranked 9th across India in the third quarter of the year, which is a rank higher than the previous quarter. City-based smartphone distributors believe that Jaipur has witnessed year after year growth of 30 per cent in sale of smartphones.

“Jaipur is one of the fastest growing city in terms of smartphone sales. On an average, there is a sale of around 3,000 phones per day in Jaipur alone. Phones under price range of Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000 are being preferred the most,” said Samveg Arora, a Jaipur-based distributor.

According to researches by GfK and Counterpoint, Samsung has acquired a major share in the city’s offline smartphone market with 33 per cent. This is followed by Xiaomi at 18 per cent and Vivo at 17 per cent.

“Jaipur is amongst the leading 10 smartphone markets in India growing by 47.2 per cent quarter on quarter in Q3 2017. This spike can be primarily attributed to multiple online festivals and sales by e-tailers expanding big into non metro cities by building upon a strong logistics network. Xiaomi and Samsung are the leading vendors. With online heavy vendors getting aggressive offline, retail will continue to dominate in Jaipur in the coming quarters,” said Himanshu Jain, market analyst, International Data Corporation India.

On the other hand, the market for purchase of second-hand smartphones has also witnessed a jump in the city.

“Jaipur serves as one of the major market for sale of used smartphones that are being procured in Delhi NCR. We aim to bring trust and transparency within this highly unorganised trade. We will see buyback of used mobiles becoming a growth driver and enabler of sale of new ones, rather than just being an additional good-to-have feature,” said Prateek Goel, founder, InstaCash. InstaCash is a recently-launched mobile application that allows the user to sell old smartphones in few minutes.

Goel further informed that average purchase price of a phone in Jaipur is cheaper at Rs 5,500 as compared to Delhi at Rs. 6,500.

City-based technology enthusiasts have started harbouring trust over used smartphones and now understand the benefit of ‘better product at cheaper cost’. This has led to increase in demand, informed Jitendra Pal, Delhi-based secondhand phone dealer who supplies in Rajasthan.