A Recent report released by market research firm IDC for Q1 2016 came with surprising data. It claims that Lenovo and Xiaomi are now out of the top five vendors list. And these two have been replaced by lesser known Chinese firms Oppo and Vivo.
Samsung is still ruling the list with 24.5% market share. It shipped 81.9 million smartphones in the first quarter. Samsung saw the year-over-year decline of 0.6% in shipment. But its newly launched Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge got the huge response from customers in many countries. We can expect Samsung to see growth in next quarter.
Apple is at the second place with 15.3% market share with the shipment of 51.2 million smartphones. This quarter was not good for Apple. It saw the first-ever year-over-year decline in the first quarter of 2016. Shipments also slipped to 51.2 million which is 16.3% down from last year. Apple also released its new iPhone SE for those who like small display phone. But this phone was also criticised for being over priced even though it carries same features as in iPhone 6S.
As usual, Huawei is at number 3 with 8.2% market share. It shipped 27.5 million smartphones in this quarter. If you compare these numbers from the numbers obtained in Q1 2015, Huawei has seen 58.4% year-over-year change.
Oppo and Vivo made surprising entry. Oppo is at 4th place with 5.5% market share and 18.5 million smartphones shipment. It saw 153.2% year-on-year change. Vivo is at fifth place with 6.4% market share. It also saw 123.8% jump in smartphone share with 14.3 million shipments in that quarter.
It is a big achievement for both Vivo and Oppo. While Xiaomi was not quite active in Q1 2016, Lenovo launched few smartphones including Lenovo K4 Note and Lenovo K5 Note. Still Lenovo couldn’t beat these new entrants. On other hands, Vivo and Oppo pushed too much money in branding and marketing. China was the primary market but Indian market also played the notable role in the success of these two companies.
Oppo saw almost 20% of shipments outside of China and in China, it did expansion via offline channels and a strong push to lower-tier cities. Vivo saw around 10% sales outside of China but in China, it got huge success due to its best-selling flagship products, the X5Pro and retail presence and marketing in lower-tier markets
Now, these companies are focusing on the Indian market and spending too much in print and TV adverts. Recently, Vivo also sponsored most popular sports event, IPL 2016 to give its brand a boost in the country.
Overall, a total of 334.9 million smartphones were shipped in the selected quarter. If you compare it with same quarter from last year, it was the slight increase from the 334.3 million figure reported in the year-ago quarter.
Source: IDC
