Xiaomi's strong online presence and offline expansion through ‘Preferred Partner’ programmes and Make in India Stores fostered it to overtake Samsung in smartphone sales in India according to a research by International Data Corporation's (IDC).

Xiaomi registered 120% growth in the Q32017 an lead the market share in 50 major cities. Redmi Note 4 contributed more than 40% of the volumes and is also the highest selling model within the top 50 cities of India. Trailing Xiaomi is Samsung with 15o% quarterly growth in Q32017.

Xiaomi and Samsung are followed by Lenovo, Vivo and Oppo. Meanwhile, Tier II cities Bhopal, Gurgaon, and Jaipur have emerged as the fastest growing cities with 40 l% more growth rate from the previous quarter.

Himanshu Jain, market analyst, IDC India said: “Mega-online sale(s) by prominent etailers acted as catalyst for the robust growth across city tiers with etailers now contributing around 40% of the market in top 50 cities of India. However, the offline channel saw only average traction during the festive season.

Navkendar Singh, associate research director, IDC India said: “Almost all vendors have now decided to go aggressive on offline channel expansion. It will be interesting to see how they are able to match the distribution strength and retail spends by offline dominant players like Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo. Considering the huge hitherto tapped demand from smaller cities and towns, eventually, these vendors will be forced to tweak their strategies to reach out to the customers in these markets.”

India recently powered ahead of US to become the world's second largest smartphone market.