Huawei’s smartphone sales are starting to see trouble in their home country, China. To be clear, Huawei isn’t hurting in any meaningful way as they have managed to sell 108 million phones in 2015 and become the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world. Their Nexus 6P, Mate 8, and the Huawei P8 helped boost sales and kept Huawei a household name in the tech world. Where Huawei is having some difficulty though, is selling smartphones in China, where they are headquartered and also a household name. As a result, it is being reported that Huawei is looking to change their strategy on what smartphones they bring to the Chinese market. China is a tremendous market for smartphone growth, but right now consumers are turning to lower-cost smartphones and ones from rivals like Oppo and Vivo.
Sales of Huawei’s high-end phones is lower than expected – the competition this year is fierce around the globe with the new Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, the new Galaxy Note 7, the new LG G5, and they keep coming with the new Moto Z line of phones and the new LG V20. Huawei made a huge jump in sales of high-end smarts when Google tagged it to produce the Nexus 6P, but with fewer sales now in the high-end line and stiffer competition being felt from China manufacturers in the low to mid-range smartphones, it seems Huawei is being forced to shift their manufacturing strategy in the hope of keeping up with Oppo and Vivo.
Huawei has already lowered its estimated smartphone shipment in 2016 from 140 million down to 120 million and Huawei will now reportedly look to concentrate on the low-end smartphone market to make further inroads in China, but it could take some time to turn things around. Huawei will likely need an aggressive marketing campaign to let the Chinese know about the benefits of the Huawei smartphone brand and especially as Oppo and Vivo are expected to sell 140-150 million units in 2016 between them. With Oppo planning a 30-percent increase in sales to 80 million and Vivo hoping to boost its sales from 50 million last year to 60-70 million this year. Impressive numbers and reasons enough which highlight why Huawei might be rethinking its marketing strategy.