A recent survey on Tuesday uncovered the Net Promoter Score (NPS) for various smartphone brands in India in which OPPO took the top spot followed by OnePlus and Huawei.

The top-selling brands like Xiaomi, Samsung and Vivo fell behind in the overall NPS score, according to the survey conducted by Numr Research, a market research company in India.

The findings in this survey are based on the responses of over 500 respondents who were between 25 and 60 years of age at the time of the survey.

Net Promoter Score, popularly known as the NPS, is a metric for calculating customer satisfaction and loyalty.

It is a proven marketeer's tool based on a single question - on a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend (a company or a service) to your friends, family or colleagues?

A higher NPS score suggests that the customers are highly satisfied with the brand and will not shy away from suggesting their peers to buy the same product.

While OPPO, OnePlus and Huawei take up the top three spots, popular brands like Apple (NPS of 68), Xiaomi (NPS of 66), Lenovo (NPS of 64) and Samsung (NPS of 63) follow them in a closely fought battle of marginal difference in scores.

According to the survey, Vivo, one of the top brand in terms of marketing spends and sales fell far behind with a score of only 25.

"This fiercely competitive market now has multiple products at every imaginable price point. In this environment, the NPS score helps in predicting who will win the war," said Amitayu Basu, CEO, Numr Research.

"With OPPO leading the way with 84 per cent NPS score, world leaders like Samsung and Apple are left to lick their wounds in their ever-decreasing market share pie," Basu said.

In the survey, 52 percent people reported that currently own only one smartphone where as 42 percent reported that they have two.

Another 5 percent reported having three personal smartphones while one percent claimed that they have four and more.

More than 161 million smartphones were sold in India in 2018, said the survey.

People also reported that they spend over an hour each on online shopping (64 min), social media (67 min) and watching movies/videos (69 min).