What do the Chinese have there?

Five years ago, most of us laughed at Chinese brands like Xiaomi and Meizu, not to mention smaller companies: UMI, Ulefone, Elephone (how to distinguish them at all?) and others. Yes, big global brands such as Lenovo, Huawei, and ZTE already had market weight and were perceived as high-end China, but they still looked at them a little biased . Years have passed, and today there are 6 Chinese brands in the TOP 10 smartphone manufacturers in the world. Six out of ten, that says something, right? In this short article I will try to briefly tell you what is going on with them, the Chinese.

In May, one of the world's largest and most reputable analytics agencies, Gartner, released data on smartphone sales for the first quarter of 2016. You can watch them here. A short version of the report is presented on the agency's website, but if you delve into the Internet, you can find more complete versions. For the first quarter of 2016 in terms of sales, smartphone manufacturers ranked like this:

  1. Samsung – 81.5 m
  2. Apple – 51.6 m
  3. Huawei – 28.9 m
  4. Oppo – 16.1 m
  5. Xiaomi – 14.8 m
  6. Vivo – 14.3 m
  7. LG – 13.5 m
  8. ZTE – 11.7 m
  9. Lenovo – 10.9 m
  10. TCL – 8.9 m

That is, Samsung has sold more than 80 million smartphones in the world in several months, Apple – more than 50 million, and so on. As you can see, there are seven companies from China among the top ten manufacturers. Seven out of ten, think about it!

To give you an example to compare, here are the 2012 worldwide smartphone sales figures (for the entire year):

  1. Samsung – 384 m
  2. Nokia – 333 m
  3. Apple – 130 m
  4. ZTE – 67 m
  5. LG – 58 m
  6. Huawei – 47 m
  7. TCL – 37 m
  8. Blackberry – 34 m
  9. Motorola – 33 m
  10. HTC – 32 m

There are only three Chinese brands on the list – the rest are from the USA, Canada, Finland and South Korea.

The current Gartner data also provides information on brands that are not included in the TOP-10, there is a fast-growing Meizu and a couple of others, but back to our top ten. It is not difficult to see the progress and growth of Chinese companies and the negative dynamics of almost all others, for example, LG are now in the TOP-10, but what will happen in a year or two is unknown. It is likely that the company will be ousted, and out of ten brands of smartphone manufacturers, eight will be Chinese.

Now, briefly about the 'Chinese' themselves.

Rapid growth is demonstrated Huawei – the company quickly reached the TOP-3 and today is doing everything to gain a foothold there. The only competitor for Huawei at the moment is the BBK concern, which owns the brands Vivo and Oppo. If we add up their sales, then BBK has already overtaken Huawei, but these brands are different, and even their positioning is different, so let's be honest. It is curious that many believe that only ultra-budget smartphones are sold in China (for example Xiaomi) and, accordingly, only companies producing cheap devices can aggressively increase their market share in China (and with it in the world ). This is not the case, and a clear confirmation of this is Vivo and Oppo. If inexpensive pipes are still found in the model range of the latter, then Vivo is an almost continuous hi-end segment. Yes, there is a relatively simple smartphone Vivo V3, for example, it is analogous to Xiaomi Redmi 3 and Meizu M3s mini, but it costs about 300 dollars, that is, not comparable to these devices. And, as you can see, the lack of a large number of 'budget' does not prevent Vivo and Oppo from rising in the table of the largest smartphone brands. Moreover, a significant part of the sales of these brands falls on the domestic market, China.

Xiaomi in the table falls, the brand is not doing as well as it might seem if you read the news and look at their news. The company was faced with the fact that other Chinese manufacturers adopted its experience too quickly and the sales mechanism only via the Internet began to falter – the price is no longer a fundamental factor in competition for Xiaomi, and now they want to develop offline sales and enter new markets. Whether it works or not, we'll see.

Lenovo feels good, but maybe not as good as the company would like. It seems to me that this is due to the slower process of reorganization of the mobile division than in Huawei. The company is not yet actively developing budget areas (remember, Huawei has a whole sub-brand for this Honor) and is busy with Moto. I hope they will do well.

ZTE is marking time, judging by the data of 2012, the company sold 67 million devices, this year the expected volume is 55-60 million.

TCL is about the same picture – 37 million in 2012, 40-45 million is expected this year.

There is still Meizu – but I will not talk about them yet, for the last couple of years the company has been growing by 300-400 percent per year, but this growth began with too small volumes, and last year the company had just entered the volume over 10 million units sold. It will be possible to take into account Meizu in the general table by the end of the year.

What do the Chinese have there?

These are the data. The Chinese, as you can see, are doing well, internal competition spurs them on very seriously, and companies are no longer just competing in the domestic market, but also striving to occupy the international market. The next five years will be very exciting in terms of the struggle between Chinese smartphone manufacturers, rest assured!

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