The rise and rise of a smartphone brand

In India's crowded smartphone market, focus on offline retail and a strong localization strategy can push a brand to the top

- Abhishek Baxi

You'll rarely find this brand's smartphones hyped up extensively. Their executives don't engage in personality-driven popularity contests. Its social media is old-fashioned marketing and not adversarial to the competition. And it isn't playing the specifications game in a specs-driven market like India.

And yet, as per recently released data from global market intelligence firm IDC, vivo (yes, the uncapitalized initial is deliberate) has surpassed brands like Samsung and Xiaomi for the leadership position in the Indian smartphone market with a 16.6% market-share in 2024, without taking into account sales of its subbrand iQOO, which had an additional market-share of 3.3% in 2024. While its flagship X series (starting at ₹65,999) delivers innovation and showcases the company's stellar camera chops, the V series (starting at ₹34,999) brings some of those features to more palatable price points. But it's the affordable Y series (starting at ₹7,999) that makes for over 50% of shipments and the online-heavy T series (starting at ₹10,499) accounting for almost 30-35% shipments. While the majority of marketing campaigns from vivo are around the flagship series, the Y and T series are growth generators for vivo.

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