India becomes no. 1 two-wheeler market

India has overtaken China to become the world's largest two-wheeler market. While the Indian two-wheeler market has seen a gradual uptrend, China's two-wheeler sales have been on the decline over the past few years, reports NDTV.
India has overtaken China to become the number one two-wheeler market in the world, overtaking China in overall sales for 2016, according to the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers (SIAM).
India sold 17.7 million two-wheelers in 2016, against China's sales of 16.8 million two-wheelers. Scooter sales alone accounted for over 5 million of those figures, while commuter motorcycles in the 100-110 cc segment accounted for nearly 6.5 million unit sales, the Indian online portal reported.
In terms of pure volumes, China's two-wheeler market is huge, but China's domestic motorcycle market has seen a downturn in recent years due to a ban of motorcycles in many Chinese urban centres.
In 2010, China's domestic motorcycle sales reached over 27 million and then decreased gradually over the next four consecutive years. Comparatively, two-wheeler sales in India have been on an uptrend over the past few years. In 2011-12, India sold over 13 million two-wheelers, which increased to nearly 16 million unit sales by 2014-15. As it stands currently, India's two-wheeler sales are over 17 million at the end of the financial year 2016-17.
There are several reasons for the downtrend in the Chinese two-wheeler market. The Chinese domestic market is highly regulated and import barriers are high, reducing motorcycle imports. Moreover, there is no developed motorcycle culture like in the West, so higher capacity motorcycles don't see any significant sales growth.

Source: NDTV