According to a recent study by Counterpoint Research, the global smartphone shipments have declined 3% annually. However this global slowdown hasn’t affected the Chinese manufacturers but instead, they manage to set new records for most shipments. The global smartphone market has been slowing down for three consecutive quarters, Samsung lost over 10% of its sales in a matter of months. But Chinese manufacturers thanks to their global expansion managed to crunch even higher numbers despite a slowdown in their home country.
The above graph shows that Chinese manufacturers exploded in the international markets offering cost-effective solutions with very little tradeoffs. Huawei set a new record by reaching the 50+ million shipment milestone and Xiaomi gained over 83% of ground thanks to successful sales of the Pocophone F1. Oppo and Vivo are still quite new to the mainstream market but they’ve definitely improved their numbers and will keep on doing so.
The South Asian region plays a very important role in terms of market ground with almost half the world’s population residing there, manufacturers gaining ground in India have a secure chance of doing well overall. We see the same approach quite recently by Samsung and OnePlus as well, OnePlus thanks to its retail stores all over the country managed to stay on top and hence performed extremely well overall.
The report clearly shows that the Asian region offers the most growth potential. India is an emerging market and if brands offer their services to the region they may gain a lot in the near future. Thanks to the unbeatable performance of the Chinese brands, the average prices of the smartphones is increasing as each iteration is completed. This allows manufacturers to rave in profits even if there is a decline in shipments.
With 5G and AI, capabilities expected in the next generation of smartphones things are looking interesting for the consumer grade device markets.
