OPPO Tops the Chinese Smartphone Market for the First Time

Add Time：2019/3/19 10:43:53

According to IDC’s latest Asia/Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the China smartphone market grew 5.8% YoY and 3.6% QoQ in the third quarter of 2016, with OPPO and vivo overtaking Huawei for the first time in the market.

OPPO Tops the Chinese Smartphone Market for the First Time

Vendor dynamics

OPPO and vivo rose because the Chinese market has evolved beyond operator and online driven channels over to an offline structure that dovetails with OPPO and vivo's strengths.

There were three key growth phases of the Chinese smartphone market seen in the past few years.

The first phase (before 2014) was when it was driven mainly by operators. Samsung, Lenovo, and Coolpad led the smartphone market then with the help of huge subsidies offered by operators.

In the second phase (2014-2015), with e-commerce booming in China, Xiaomi was one of the first vendors that rode on that e-commerce wave and disrupted the market by selling its phones online through its flash sales. That kicked off another trend as other vendors soon tried to follow suit and created their own online brands and sold their phones through their own websites and that of eTailers.