Samsung finally (sort of) admits it's only India's second-biggest smartphone brand

As early as January 2018, statistics have shown that Samsung is the second biggest smartphone vendor in India, losing its previously-held top spot to Chinese rival Xiaomi. Since then, numerous other reports have surfaced saying the same thing: as far as smartphone shipments go, Samsung is only second best in India.

However, despite all these reports, Samsung has stubbornly refused to admit over the past year that Xiaomi is top dog. Samsung instead points to other data from a German research firm which still shows Samsung on top.

DJ Koh, the mobile division CEO at Samsung, finally appears to be ready to admit the truth about Samsung’s place in India, at least sort of (via SamMobile). At a Samsung Galaxy S10 launch event in India, Koh had this to say:

We may have dropped to second place in terms of number of devices shipped, but we are still dominant when it comes to revenues. We do want to get back to the No. 1 spot in terms of volumes and we’ll do that by embracing a broad range of customer needs. We’re particularly counting on the M series for that.

While this statement clearly isn’t a complete admission of Xiaomi’s dominance in India, it’s actually the closest Samsung has ever come to publicly admitting the truth in over a year.

Samsung’s strategy in this matter might be to simply never admit that Xiaomi is on top until Samsung can actually get back on top. However, with Xiaomi’s successful strategy of releasing powerful phones at rock bottom prices showing no signs of stopping, it will likely be quite a while before Samsung can overtake it.

NEXT: Samsung launches its Galaxy S10 family of flagship smartphones in India