A report last week said that Apple had lost a trio of its top sales executives in India as its iPhone sales continued to fall in the country. Now, new data from Counterpoint Research indicates Apple secured just 1 percent of the smartphone market in India during Q2 of 2018…

According to the data, Samsung came in atop of Xiaomi to become the top smartphone maker in India with 29 percent of the market, up from 24 percent during the same quarter last year. Xiaomi likewise experienced strong growth, rocketing from 16 percent of market share to 28 percent.

Rounding out the top 5 are Vivo, Oppo, and Honor – with Apple being lumped into the ‘Others’ category, which as a whole accounted for 18 percent of the market.

Counterpoint explains that Apple experienced a “slow quarter” due to changes in its distribution strategy, estimating the company secured just 1 percent of the market during Q2. Further, Apple’s efforts to build iPhones in India have gotten off to a rocky start, meaning it still relies on pricey imports for its sales in the country:

Apple had a slow quarter as it underwent changes in its distribution strategy. Apart from this, its domestic assembling is yet to pick up the pace, which means the Cupertino giant is still relying on imports for its sales in India. Apple had a 1% market share during the quarter, its lowest in recent history.

A report from Bloomberg last week, citing data from Counterpoint for 2017, said that Apple had a 2 percent share of the market. The report also estimated that Apple had sold fewer than 1 million iPhones in India so far this year, which likely explains the fall from 2 percent to 1 percent in market share.

Apple’s struggles in India are made worse by the fact that Tim Cook was once incredibly bullish on the iPhone’s potential in the country. Due to pricing issues and strict government requirements, however, things have never taken off like Cook and Apple had once hoped.

Source: 9to5mac