Smartphone sales in India have already picked up pace ahead of the festive season due to pent-up demand from the lockdown and new use cases like education of children even as 200 million smartphones in the country are waiting to be upgraded, industry experts said on Wednesday.

The rise in the growth of smartphone sales is likely to jump further now due to the festive season offers as e-commerce platforms like Flipkart gears up for the Big Billion Days and Amazon for Great Indian Festival from the middle of this month.

"I think the past three months were better than industry expectations," Tarun Pathak, Associate Director at Counterpoint Research, told IANS.

India's smartphone shipments declined by 51 per cent year-over-year to just over 18 million units in the second quarter of this year as April was a washout due to the Covid-19 restrictions, according to research from Counterpoint's Market Monitor service.

However, signs of recovery in the India market emerged in June itself as the report said that pent-up smartphone demand after April, May lockdown pushed the June 2020 volumes to pre-Covid levels and the smartphone user base in India beyond the half-a-billion mark.

In June, Indian smartphone shipments registered a decline of just 0.3 per cent year-over-year.

"This build-up to the festive season is quite strong along with new launches...So original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and retailers will try to make up for the lost demand during the pandemic," Pathak said.

"However, the average selling price will be lower than expected as there is a visible economic impact of the pandemic," he said.

Smartphone makers also revealed that they have seen a surge in the demand for their products.

(IANS)