According to a new report from Canalys, Huawei has managed to regain number one spot in China. Canalys says that Huawei spent two quarters being a second-placed smartphone manufacturer in China, as OPPO strived in the Chinese market, but it seems like the tables have turned in Q1 2017. Canalys says that Huawei managed to ship approximately 21 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year, and has secured 18% market share in their homeland, which is more than enough to get them back to the very top of the food chain.
Now, OPPO has been a real success story in China, as the company grew immensely over the last couple of years. OPPO has an extremely high annual growth of 55%, but despite that, Huawei managed to climb back to the top once again. OPPO shipped out almost 20 million units in the first quarter of this year, and it’s close to Huawei in that regard. Now, the third-placed company on this list is Vivo, as many of you probably already guessed, the company managed to grab 15% of market share and ship out 17 million smartphones. “China’s smartphone market continues to grow, with shipments increasing by over 9% year on year this quarter,” said Lucio Chen, a Research Analyst over at Canalys. Now, Mr. Chen also mentioned that the aforementioned three companies are accounting for 50% of shipments in the Chinese smartphone market, which is quite interesting.
Now, some of you might wonder how is Xiaomi doing in China, well, the company is currently the fifth-placed smartphone manufacturer in its homeland, and it managed to ship out 9 million smartphones in the first quarter of this year. Interestingly enough, Apple managed to grab the third place in China, and it seems like many Chinese consumers are still interested in Apple’s iPhone smartphones. Mo Jia, yet another Canalys Research Analyst, said that Xiaomi still has a chance to become a huge success this year, but that they’ll need to move away from being a value-for-money vendor, and become ‘an aspirational brand’. According to the source, 114 million smartphones have been shipped in China in the first quarter of this year.