Caught between Donald Trump’s geopolitical tensions in West Asia and a global chip crunch driven by Nvidia prioritising AI memory supply, India’s leading smartphone brands—Vivo, Oppo, Samsung, along with Realme, Xiaomi and Nothing—have become early casualties of a once-booming market, hiking smartphone prices by up to 40% across their line-ups.
The impact is substantial. Smartphones remain India’s largest electronics segment, with projected sales exceeding $43 billion by 2025. However, since the 2021 pandemic phase, the market has struggled to regain momentum, weighed down by incremental innovation and growing saturation.