As the Indian smartphone market witnesses an overall volume crunch due to declining shipments in the mass segment, analysts expect premium device sales to largely drive growth going forward, as the market shifts from being volume-driven to value-driven.

The Indian smartphone market exited 2022 with 144 million shipments – the lowest since 2019 – declining 10 per cent year-on-year (YoY), according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC), a market intelligence platform. This primarily came on the back of a 54 per cent YoY decline in the entry-level segment, also known as the mass segment (sub-$150), which shrank to 46 per cent of the market.

While the overall market witnessed a ship