The Chinese smartphone market is still the largest smartphone market in the world. India has managed to grow quite a bit over the last couple of years, but it’s still nowhere near China in that regard. China is home to many smartphone manufacturing companies, and even though the market has become saturated, the sales are still kicking strong. The Q1 2016 sales results are in, at least the ones published by Digitimes Research, so let’s see what’s going on in China, shall we.
According to the source, there were 104.7 million smartphones shipped out in China in the first quarter of this year. This basically means that the sales fell 11.2% compared to Q4 2015, but rose 20.1% YoY (Year-on-Year). Now, the Q1 2016 smartphone sales in China actually account for 33.8% of global sales, which is staggering, and it really paints a nice picture, Chinese smartphone market is huge. China-based smartphone manufacturers shipped out 83 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, and they account for 79.3% of the market share. The international companies, however, shipped out 21.7 million handsets in the first quarter, and have managed to grab 20.7% of the market, which means they currently hold 35.5% less market share than in Q4 2015, and 17.5% less than in the same period last year.
Huawei was the most successful China-based company in the country last quarter according to Digitimes. The company has managed to ship out 14.1 million smartphones, and it is followed by Oppo (12.2 million units), BBK (11.8 million units) and Xiaomi (8 million units). Coolpad is placed fifth on this list, and has managed to sell 5.4 million handsets, and it is followed by the likes of Gionee (4.4 million), Meizu (3.6 million) and ZTE (2.1 million). Now, as far as international companies go, Apple was the most successful one, the Cupertino giant sold 13.5 million smartphones in Q1 2016. Samsung, on the other hand, has sold 7.2 million units, while HTC managed to ship out 300,000 devices. These three companies are followed by Microsoft (200,000 units), Motorola, LG and Sony, all of which have shipped out 100,000 handsets. There you have it, as you can see, the China-based companies were quite successful, and so was Apple, while Samsung didn’t do that bad either, but every other international company didn’t fare that well in China.