As the China market matures, the appetite for smartphones has slowed dramatically as the explosion of uptake has passed its peak.”Along China’s maturing smartphone adoption curve, the companies most aligned with growth are those with products serving increasingly sophisticated consumers”.”Lenovo benefited with ASPs below US$150 in 2013, and Xiaomi picked up the mantle with ASPs below US$200 in 2014 and 2015″.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, Chinese brands OPPO and vivo emerged as strong players, pushing Lenovo and Xiaomi off the list of top five vendors.
Oppo and Vivo are mostly known in the Chinese market, though Oppo now gets about 20 percent of its sales from outside its home turf.
OPPO and Vivo are the two new smartphone makers in the chart prepared by IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker for the first quarter of 2016.
Huawei, which manufactures Google’s popular Android-based Nexus 6P smartphone, shipped 27.5 million handsets during the quarter for 8.2 percent market share as it attempts to compete with Apple and Samsung in the USA market and other regions beyond China.
Both companies have been shipping devices since 2011, but OPPO took the first leap into worldwide shipping in 2012. In Q1 2016, the South Korean company once again shipped more smartphones than any other company. Almost 20 percent of OPPO’s shipments were sent outside China in 2015, the report said. The IDC notes that the S7 family have sold well as has the less expensive J-family, but it should be worrying for Samsung that this has not stopped the sales decline. “Their ability to drive local growth no longer applies when it comes to global expansion, where premium branding quickly turns to price competition”. Apple saw its sales drop to 51.2 million, down substantially from 61.2 million during the previous year, but held on to second with a 15.3 percent market share. Huawei trailed in third with 8.2 percent of the market share, but appeared to have made gains on Apple year over year.
The shift in market share is all the more important as growth in the smartphone market stalls.
Oppo and vivo are China-based smartphone manufacturers.
Advertisement
If they hope to continue their dominant peers, IDC said both OPPO and vivo need to do more to raise their brand awareness in more mature markets. “Their ability to drive local growth no longer applies when it comes to global expansion, where premium branding quickly turns to price competition”.
