Holy Cow! Milk Turns Sour

How Micromax, Intex, Lava and Karbonn—aka MILK—lost their dominant position.

- Rajiv Singh

August 2014. India is getting decked up for Independence Day celebrations. In sync with the nationalistic spirit comes the news that domestic handset makers have together captured more than two-thirds of the market. In fact, Indian players have dominated over half of the smartphone market during the second quarter (April-June). Micromax, in a first, has overtaken mighty South Korean rival Samsung to become India’s biggest handset player with a 17 percent share. What’s more, the desi hustler has pipped Finnish giant Nokia to become the leading feature phone brand. Two other Indian players, Karbonn and Lava, are among the top five feature phone makers. Karbonn is also the third biggest smartphone brand during the quarter.

Cut to August 2018. In a dramatic anti-climax, Indian MILK (Micromax, Intex, Lava and Karbonn) has turned sour. Four of the top five players today are Chinese; the fifth is Samsung. Together they control a record 82 percent share of the smartphone market, according to the latest second-quarter data released by market research firm Counterpoint.

While the Chinese are sharing the spoils in smartphones, in feature phones it’s Jio that rules the roost with a 47 percent market share in the same period.

From a high of 19.1 percent in smartphones in 2014, the share of Micromax, the biggest among MILK, plunged to 1 percent in the second quarter of this financial year. The crash in the overall handset market share during the same period is equally phenomenal: From 16.6 percent to 1 percent.