Festive season widens offline-online rift on smartphones

New Delhi: This festive season the rift between online channels and offline retail stores has aggravated further with brick-and-mortar stores blaming ecommerce portals of controlling a majority of the sales through differential pricing, exclusive deals and discounts.

Online channels captured a record 58% of smartphone sales in the third quarter of the calendar year that includes the festive season, according to an IDC India report. While the growth in the online channel remained flat, sales in the offline segment fell 20% on-year on low demand and aggressive pricing on ecommerce platforms, IDC added.