The Chinese smartphone market is becoming overcrowded at the moment, there are tons of manufacturers which are located in China and sell their products. You probably know the biggest players there, but there are tons of small manufacturers over there which we hardly even hear about. Xiaomi is the number one smartphone manufacturer in China at the moment, being ahead of brands like Samsung for example. Meizu is also on the rise over there but can’t compare to Xiaomi at the moment, not even close. The sales of their MX4 flagship have been extremely promising, they even worried Xiaomi to some extent. Meizu still has to launch MX4 Pro this November, but it seems like Xiaomi has something up their sleeve as well.
As I said, there are also smaller companies in China that make rather solid devices, one of such companies is IUNI. This Chinese manufacturer was founded on 20th of October 2013, which means it’s not even a year old at this point. You might recall IUNI introduced company’s U3 device which is extremely competitive and for 2000 Yuan (which is its price) it brings a lot to the table. You get a 5.5-inch QHD display, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage here along with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor and 13-megapixel camera with Sony’s sensor. This device also sports a rather premium build and for the given price, it’s really hard to find a better offering out there. But even if you consider the price, who knows if IUNI will be able to sell enough of these devices in the coming months. IUNI U3 is on sale in China already, by the way, we still don’t know if it will be available internationally from the manufacturer, it will be through reseller for sure though.
IUNI’s U3 didn’t exactly sell all that well, IUNI sold less than 50,000 units of U2 since it launched back in March. This actually might be one of the reasons head of IUNI, He Xiaojun, resigned recently. IUNI expected far better results as far as U2 sales go and hopefully they’ll be able to achieve that with the U3. This device is extremely appealing and it really offers a lot for the price, I never get tired of saying that. Considering the competition in Chinese market, investors really seek results in order to keep companies afloat, so IUNI’s future might depend on the U3 sales. Jin Lu Wei, president of Artesyn Technologies, said that IUNI’s future might be a bright one, but it will be difficult for the company to get there. Statistics show significant drop for Samsung in China, from 20% in September last year, the company’s share dropped to 16% this year, which basically means Chinese brands are doing great, especially Xiaomi. Lenovo and Huawei are also doing really good in China.
It will be interesting to see how will IUNI fare in the coming months / year, this company has lots of potential and IUNI U3 truly is a great device. I hope they will be able to sell enough devices to keep themselves out of trouble and keep their investors, it would be a shame to lose a company which can offer such a well-specced device at such a low price point. Do you think IUNI will be able to grow and compete with the biggest players in China or will the company crash and burn?