Yasmin Haque, who is now a senior analyst at IHS Markit. “Our biggest takeaway was that mobile is the main source of the increase in revenue in the smartphone market. The other takeaway is that the demand for smartphones is not just growing, it is rising more quickly than the number of new Android smartphones getting manufactured.”

There are already more than a staggering 16 million smartphone sales every year. Some estimates suggest Samsung will be making almost 70% of them in 2014, and that in five years, the top two vendors will be making 80% of the market. Some analysts have also put the potential growth in the smartphone market in India at 80% a year for the next 20 years.

The total combined mobile phone sales in India is expected to more than double from $16 billion in 2010 to $90 billion in 2026, according to the Indian government research agency, the National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAI).

“The number one seller will be Sony,” Mr Jaitley said. “There is one in Apple, there is one in HTC, there are one in Nokia. There is one in Motorola, and the trend is likely to continue for a long time.”

Samsung has a bigger market share in India than the next two big players combined because, with its high-end line of models, it has a good range of features that customers want in a phone. Unlike in Europe, where Apple has a much stronger presence in the market, Samsung has never seen a similar success in an Indian market.

Some argue that the iPhone is seen as a good investment in India for now by investors, but it could also be seen as a poor investment for the firm in the long run. The Indian government subsidises the expensive iPhone 6s and 6s Plus phones – at a cost of around $1,800 for a new handset – and subsidises mobile phones to low-income families, but this has made the handset more difficult to use for a number of users.

The high cost could affect demand for smartphones even more in India, which now has around 1.3 billion mobile phone users, or around 40% of the population. The Indian government this week announced a three-year pilot scheme that will charge customers a fixed 1%, or Rs2,000, for each new smartphone they buy – down from 2% – and that this will increase by Rs900 per month for phones purchased from 2016.