China Smartphone Market 2015: Huawei and Oppo Shine as Xiaomi and Lenovo Lose Steam

Last year was the one wherein many of the incumbent smartphone manufacturers struggled to keep up their profit margins while new entrants in the market tried to entice the buyers with affordable handsets featuring top of the line hardware.

It seems that Oppo had a great 2015 after it sold 50 million units amid which the R7 lineup itself constituted for a staggering 15-Million units. The report says that smartphones priced between $303.85 and $455 sold the most. This in itself is a very interesting trend unique to Oppo. What we need to realize is that unlike other manufacturers, Oppo doesn’t believe in low priced smartphones, instead the phones are usually priced higher as opposed to its competition, which needless to say includes Xiaomi and Huawei.
On the contrary, Xiaomi failed to reach its much aspired goal of 100-Million smartphones as the total shipments accounted for around 72-Million units. It seems that Xiaomi had initially pegged the 100-Million target in lieu with its expansion in the US market, a move that didn’t materialize possibly on the wake of lack in intellectual property and the fear of being sued for the same.

Even Lenovo saw a steep drop in its annual shipments for 2015, as the total numbers plummeted from 90-Million in 2014 to 72-Million in 2015. Huawei secured the first place in China (and third place globally) after it managed to sell a whopping 100-Million devices globally, a feat possible by the strong Honor line-up and the expansion in the sales channels.
The takeaway from the stats is the very fact that not everyone who are selling cheap are topping the charts, Xiaomi seems to be struggling in recent times and as a result we have witnessed a sluggish trend in the introduction of phones for the Indian market. That being said, the after sales support and even the offline sales channel also matters a lot when it comes to the total shipment results. OEMs like Oppo and Vivo continue to grow in volumes as well as revenues. A hidden gem who is happy to play only on the Chinese ground is TCL, which we think will soon expand to other parts of Asia this year.