Mobiles / Devices

Oppo & Vivo replace Lenovo & Xiaomi among top smartphone makers

The top 2 smartphone makers Samsung and Apple maintained their spot as 1st and 2nd respectively. Huawei has already taken its place as 3rd contender in the global market. However the struggling Lenovo and Xiaomi lost it to other Chinese brands OPPO and VIVO.

According to the recent IDC report, total smartphones shipped this year during first quarter are slightly up as compared to Q1 2015 – with numbers as 334.9 million vs 334.3 million respectively. Where as the top Samsung has faced a decline in shipments as 0.6% and Apple has seen its first ever decline as 16.3% down from last year.

Most interesting fact in the report reveals that Oppo and Vivo have just pushed out the recently getting empowered Lenovo and Xiaomi which got their fourth and fifth positions in Q4 2015. As IDC believes, this sudden rise of the new replacement smartphone makers follows the dramatic decrease in Chinese smartphone market as by 2015 the year-over-year growth dropped from 62.5% to only 2.5%. That also relates to the fact that average selling price for smartphones in China increased from $207 to $257 in 2015.

The bottom three spots sure got their numbers up as Huawei also gain 58.4% increase in the market share from 5.2% previously to 8.2% this year. Samsung and Apple only suffer from the market saturation where Samsung seems not to have lost as severely – due to their early release of Galaxy S7 and S7 edge, as Apple has to face this year.

“Along China’s maturing smartphone adoption curve, the companies most aligned with growth are those with products serving increasingly sophisticated consumers. Lenovo benefited with ASPs below US$150 in 2013, and Xiaomi picked up the mantle with ASPs below US$200 in 2014 and 2015. Now Huawei, OPPO, and vivo, which play mainly in the sub-US$250 range, are positioned for a strong 2016,” – Melissa Chau, senior research manager with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

She also suggested that “These new vendors would be well-advised not to rest on their laurels though, as this dynamic smartphone landscape has shown to even cult brands like Xiaomi that customer loyalty is difficult to consistently maintain.”

Checkout the list below with top 5 slots of brands with their market share and year-over-year growth as of Q1 2016. (Units in Millions) – as appeared on IDC report

	Shipment		Market Share
Vendor	1Q16	1Q15	1Q16	1Q15	Change
Samsung	81.9	82.4	24.5%	24.6%	-0.6%
Apple	51.2	61.2	15.3%	18.3%	-16.3%
Huawei	27.5	17.4	8.2%	5.2%	58.4%
OPPO	18.5	7.3	5.5%	2.2%	153.2%
vivo	14.3	6.4	4.3%	1.9%	123.8%
Others	141.5	159.8	42.3%	47.8%	-11.4%
Total	334.9	334.4	100.0%	100.0%	0.2%
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, April 27, 2016.