As most of you know, Chinese smartphone market is the largest smartphone market in the world at the moment, and it has been that way for quite some time now. Some of the China-based companies have been extremely successful in the last couple of years, Xiaomi and Huawei are actually prime examples. These two companies have grown immensely lately, Huawei has managed to sell 108 million smartphones globally last year, and Xiaomi has shipped out 70 million units in 2015, though keep in mind this company was founded back in 2010, so it’s a really young company actually.
That being said, IDC has released a rather interesting graph which represents growth of the companies which do business in China from 2011 to 2015. There are four China-based companies on that list, plus Apple. As you can see, all of these companies grew quite a bit since 2011, while Apple, Xiaomi and Huawei are definitely in a completely different category. This graph clearly shows their growth rate, and Xiaomi definitely profited most here, as it grew from nothing to the no.1 smartphone OEM in China. According to IDC’s info, Xiaomi holds about 15% of market share in China, which makes it first-placed company in that country. Huawei and Apple are close by though, Huawei holds 14.5%, and Apple 13.4% of the market.
Now, it is also worth mentioning that in 2015, Xiaomi saw a year-on-year (YoY) growth both in shipments and market share. Xiaomi grew 23.2% in this regard, while Huawei and Apple managed to grow 53% and 56% YoY, which is quite staggering. As far as year-over-year Average Selling Price (ASP) goes, Huawei actually grew 20.9%, while Xiaomi saw negative growth in this regard (-7.6%). Now, IDC says that this trend probably won’t continue, at least not at this scale. They said that 2016 will quite possibly be a stagnant year for smartphones in the Chinese market, but that the market will mature. IDC also said that many companies will actually focus on selling their devices online this year, which is interesting. Either way, it will be interesting to see what will happen next.