IDC : Huawei continue to lead in China smartphone sales in 3rd quarter of 2017
Huawei has managed to continue its lead at the top of Chinese smartphone market. With 22.3 million shipments in China, Huawei managed to capture 19.4% of marketshare. Their share went up from 15.6%. OPPO managed to stay in second place with 18.8% of marketshare. One more quarter and OPPO may take the lead from Huawei. Vivo, with 18.9 million shipments, managed to stay in 3rd place. Xiaomi and Apple managed round off top five positions in China. The bad news though is that the overall smartphone shipments declined by 1%. If you have not noticed yet, Samsung is out of the top 5 in China now.
“Even though the market is getting saturated in China, smartphone companies are still aggressive in trying to steal market share from their competitors. OPPO and vivo used to be the main companies with aggressive sponsorship of key television programmes. However, we see increased aggression from Huawei and Xiaomi in this aspect in recent months. Xiaomi began sponsoring three popular entertainment programmes on television. With competition heating up, top smartphone players will need to either maintain or increase their marketing activities in the coming quarters. The implication for smaller players who do not have a high marketing budget is that it will be harder to thrive or survive in the saturated China smartphone market. The smaller smartphone companies that focus on the Tier 3 to Tier 5 cities will continue to depend on the subsidy from operators to target a very niche consumer segment, ” says Tay Xiaohan, Research Manager, Client Devices Research, IDC Asia/Pacific.
