A product category that built its growth via the online channel is now leaning towards physical stores.
The channel mix of smartphone shipments in the last four to five quarters shows that the smartphone brands have realigned themselves towards offline retail. This is a reversal of the situation when smartphone OEMs ran exclusive online-only sales in the past.
Data and insights from research firms tracking the sector show that growing premiumisation narrative in India’s smartphone market is helping grow the share of shipments to offline/physical retail stores.
As per IDC (International Data Corporation), the share of offline channel in smartphone shipments grew to 58 per cent in Jan-March 2025 compared to 49.9 per cent in Jan-March 2024. Analysts at the firm attribute this to decision of brands to go the omnichannel way and expand their footprints into smaller towns. The trend is also more pronounced among premium devices, where customers want to experience the device before investing, they add.
“For instance, more than 55 per cent iPhone shipments were through online channel in Q1-2024, while now offline accounts for more than 3/5th of Apple shipments. Similarly for Samsung, online channel used to account for 55 per cent shipments, while in Q12025, it is down to 42 per cent only. Brands like vivo or Oppo both have 80 per cent+ shipments driven through offline channel now,” Upasana Joshi, Senior Research Manager, IDC India, said.
Analysts at Canalys (now part of Omdia) note that online shipments are now largely seasonal, peaking around deals season in the e-commerce world, while offline channels deliver more stable volumes throughout the year.
“Consumer habits are maturing and many still browse online but prefer the confidence of an in-store experience before committing…Brands, including Xiaomi, realme, POCO, OnePlus and Motorola—initially online-centric—are leaning heavily on offline expansion to reach new customers and boost ASPs,” Sanyam Chaurasia, Prinicipal Analyst at Omdia, said in a new research note.
According to Canalys, the offline average selling prices (ASPs) are also rising faster (from $196 in Q12022 to $303 in Q12025) when compared to online ASPs, suggesting that offline consumers are increasingly driving higher-value sales drawn by the in-store experience.
The parity in prices between the two channels and the increased push by offline traders urging brands to not differentiate between the two channels have also helped bring about this change, analysts note.
Today, there seems to be no real strong incentive to buy online in terms of prices, and the e-retail platforms too have not been able to get benefits out of better product positioning,” Faisal Kawoosa, chief analyst, Techarch, said. “Earlier, only Samsung had really deep offline footprints in the country, but today almost all main brands are present at least over 50,000 touch points even serving tier 2 and tier 3,” he added.
Prachir Singh, Senior Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research notes that the earlier boom of online segment coincided with the pandemic when consumers were forced to buy digitally and today the premiumisation of the smartphone industry is helping more activity in the offline retail. “Overall, we don’t see the online share going below 35-40 per cent when it comes to smartphones,” he said.
Published on July 9, 2025
