China is the largest smartphone market in the world, and it has been that way for quite some time now. There are tons of very well-known smartphone manufacturers that come from China, like Huawei, Xiaomi and ZTE, for example. Pretty much everyone has heard of these companies, though China is home to many successful smartphone vendors, and even the ones that are considered to be ‘2nd-tier’ companies have managed to grow quite a bit last year, read on.
A new report from Beijing Business Today (via Digitimes) shows that Vivo, Oppo and Gionee did really well last year, despite market slowdown in China. We’ve reported earlier that Oppo managed to sell 50 million handsets last year, which managed to surprise quite a few people. In addition to this, the source says that Oppo and Vivo managed to take eight and ninth position in the global smartphone manufacturer rankings last year, which can be considered a great success for these two companies. Oppo and Vivo grabbed 3.8%, and 3.3% share, respectively, according to TrendForce. Vivo, Oppo and Gionee have actually managed to open up more retail shops in third-tier cities in China than Samsung or Huawei, for example, which certainly helped the company sell more devices.
It will certainly going to be interesting to see if Vivo, Oppo and Gionee will be as successful by the end of this year. Oppo and Vivo sure did kick off 2016 in full speed, Oppo has introduced their Oppo R9 and R9 Plus devices recently, while Vivo has rolled out the Xplay 5, world’s first 6GB RAM smartphone. The Oppo R7 and R7 Plus were amongst the best selling Oppo-branded devices last year, the company has managed to sell 15 million R7 & R7 Plus units last year, which suggests the Oppo R9 and R9 Plus might be quite popular as well. It is still too early to tell how well will Xplay 5 do, but thanks to the ‘Dual Edge’ display Vivo used, and the fact that the phone has 6GB of RAM will certainly help, even though the device is not all that cheap. Either way, stay tuned, Chinese smartphone market is ever-changing, so it will certainly going to be interesting to see what happens next.