India has toppled Japan to become the world's third largest smartphone market for the first time ever during Q1 2013, stated a new report from Strategy Analytics. China and US continue to remain top two markets currently. Anaylst state that companies like Samsung, Micromax and Apple are driving higher volumes of growth through improved distribution networks in the country.

India is growing four times faster than the global average. Worldwide smartphone volumes expanded 39% YoY, compared with 163% YoY across India, during Q1 2013. The Indian market is rising quicker than China (86% YoY), Japan (24% YoY), the US (19% YoY) and almost all other major countries.

The report, further, highlighted that although foreign firms such as Samsung and Apple are driving the growth it is the domestic players who are seeing the fastest growth. It names Micromax, Karbonn and Spice which are growing between 200% and 500% on an annual basis.

Meanwhile, the extra long tail of Indian microvendors in the "Others" category, such as Lemon Mobile, is surging at 1000%+ YoY.

“They are almost all using Android software, which captured 89% share of the entire market in the quarter,” added the analyst.