Smartphone giants Huawei and Xiaomi experience domestic meltdown as Vivo and Oppo emerge in top spots. In the mid of 2016, the two leaders were surpassed by newer phone makers.
China's dynamics continues to amaze the world, the country's smartphone industry faces a massive turnabout in its leading brands. While Huawei and Xiaomi sour internationally, they were being left behind locally. Domestic market sales percentages experiences drop.
According to Counterpoint Research as reported on CNET, Vivo, and Oppo's head to head battle as China's No.1 brand is a Cinderella story. AndroidAuthority also added,"It's a kind of rags-to-riches story for Vivo and OPPO." During the third quarter of 2015, Vivo's 8.9% and Oppo's 9.9% were lost to Huawei's 15.6% and Xiaomi's 14.65% market value as smartphone Cinderella's prove their toughness towards 2016.
Peter Richardson commented on Forbes, “Oppo and Vivo’s growth story has been impressive and it is important to note that the brands which have entered the top three spots in Chinese smartphone market have tendency to hold on to the spots for at least for some period of time,”
Counterpoint Research's blogs shared, "While Xiaomi continues to be among top 5 smartphone brands, it is facing challenges to sustain growth because of saturated home market which is still contributing to almost 90% of its sales.As a result, Xiaomi's smartphones shipments declined 5% annually and 27% sequentially."
The same blog also added, "The growth of Oppo & Vivo can be attributed to stable retail channel strategy, aggressively going after a bigger piece of the offline pie, compared to an operator-led or e-commerce strategy like Huawei or Xiaomi respectively."
Huawei and Xiaomi are still in the lead for 3rd and 4th places, 2016 's still far behind China's still on for explosive bouts of smartphone battles. Analysts said that further design, manufacturing and sales improvement would largely help. Also, the two company's international channels could still give Vivo and Oppo a wide berth.
