Mobile, fashion dominate online festive sales

The festive month of October brought a big cheer for those serving the mobile, fashion and consumer electronics industry as sales in these categories saw a massive boost on various e-commerce platforms.

According to industry analysts, mobile once again ruled the roost, catering to nearly 50 per cent of all online sales during the month.

"Smartphones led all the other categories in terms of wooing the users. People thronged online platforms for new smartphones that came bundled with attractive offers," Faisal Kawoosa, Founder and Chief Analyst, techARC, told IANS.

Consumers delayed their mobile purchases for the festive sale season, indicating the strong "value shopping" proposition of festive days.

The online festive sales on e-commerce platforms such as Amazon India and Flipkart will lead to an addition of six million new 4G smartphone user base in the country, according to techARC.

The online festive season will see users upgrading to 4G smartphones from existing 2G and 3G devices and an estimated 10 million smartphones are to be sold during the festive season.

"We expect existing 2G and 3G smartphone users to take advantage and upgrade to the latest commercially available technology in smartphones," said Kawoosa.

The installed base of 4G smartphone handsets will go up by 1.3 per cent to 72.9 per cent. Non-4G Smartphone installed base is still above 30 per cent of total smartphones in use.

The smartphone industry in India is not impacted by economic slowdown and is, in fact, moving towards a record festive quarter this year.

Apple is in for a bumper festive season sales and Samsung India is targeting business worth Rs 3,000 crore by selling over 2 million smartphones online this month.

Chinese smartphone makers like OnePlus, Xiaomi , OPPO and Realme are also expecting record growth online.

Other than smartphones, fashion and consumer electronics were among the top gainers as the demand surged from smaller cities and towns this year -- indicating that the consumer spending has only increased in the country despite slowdown fears.

According to Forrester, TVs and smart speakers are the categories to watch this year, especially with Motorola, Xiaomi, and OnePlus launching new TV models to cater to customers looking to upgrade their current sets.

"We expect around 20.2 million TVs to be sold in India in 2019; 30 per cent to 35 per cent of these will be sold online due to pricing and products with better specifications," said a latest Forrester report.

Amazon Fashion saw a massive jump in customers from non-metro and Tier 2 and 3 cities in its first wave of festive sales. In apparel, top performing brands included Levis, Van Heusen and Allen Solly.

Leading kids wear brands like Mothercare and USPA were most popular. Max Fashion was the largest single brand. In shoes, top brands included Bata, Puma, Crocs, Mochi, Catwalk and Metro.

Amazon Beauty saw a huge surge in demand led by makeup products, followed by daily care essentials and international perfumes.

On Flipkart, Fashion witnessed a 70 per cent growth in sales compared to last year and 40 per cent of all new customers to Flipkart on its first "Big Billion Day" sale came through Fashion.