Toutiao, China’s leading news and information content platform, recently released a white paper on online public opinion and user reputation of mobile phone brands in the Chinese market in the first half of 2018.
In 2013, it was common to see people upgrade to a new iPhone or Samsung every year. In 2018, the cost of a new premium smartphone has doubled to around US $1,000. I find myself holding on to my phone a lot longer nowadays.
OnePlus has emerged as the fastest growing smartphone brand in the past quarter in India, leading the high-end smartphone sales for the first time in the market.
At the end of last year, Xiaomi accomplished a feat that no other smartphone manufacturer had been able to do in the past six years in India. Xiaomi surpassed Samsung to become India’s largest smartphone brand. This was an important milestone for the Chinese manufacturer, especially considering Xiaomi started selling phones just three years ago.
Samsung has been increasingly underperforming in market share, customer attraction, and brand awareness. As Samsung releases the S9 for pre-sale earlier this week, the company is becoming more marginalized in China.
Xiaomi surpassed Samsung as the largest smartphone brand in India in January and announced a product release conference in New Delhi on February 14.
The global smartphone market was saturated in 2017. China’s handset market plunged more than 10 percent and many Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, including Huawei and Xiaomi, are preparing to excavate the gold from the US market.
Well-known market research firm IDC released its Q4 2017 global handset shipments report on February 1.
Data from Canalys showed that China’s smartphone market has stagnated and smartphone shipments fell for the first time in 2017.
Huawei’s smartphone shipment target will be 200 million units in 2018, according to a source familiar with the company’s internal planning.
Xiaomi and Samsung both shipped 9.2 million mobile phones, each accounting 23.5 percent of the Indian smartphone market during Q3, IDC reported on November 14. The two are now tied for India’s top mobile phone brand. The news marks the first time Xiaomi has caught up with Samsung to become the top smartphone in India.
An army of Chinese brands led by Xiaomi has come to dominate the domestic smartphone market. SONY, Samsung, Blackberry and a large number of overseas brands have become its victims. Foreign media reported that Samsung’s smartphone market share in China fell to 2 percent in Q3, putting it in ninth place.
Strategy Analytics released a report on October 29, showing Samsung still ranks first in the Indian mobile market with a 26 percent market share in Q3, Yonhap News Agency reported. Samsung has maintained its market share in India for a number of years.
