China Gains Smartphone Share But Sucks Up Losses

Is this a great achievement or does it show China has learnt how to bend plastic round a Qualcomm or MediaTek chip-set?

It would seem the latter. Apple and Samsung took 95% of the smartphone industry's profits last year, says Strategy Analytics, and Huawei, Vivo and Oppo took a collective 4.4% so that the other 150 smartphone manufacturers either live on the thin gruel of a collective 0.6% market share or suck up large losses.

Why do they do it? Well in China it's probably for the greater glory of the Communist Party's current 5 year Economic Plan. For others it's a bit of a mystery. Why earth, for instance, is Google making its Pixel smartphone? A tax loss? Who knows.

Anyway, although the market is a bit silly, here are the numbers for the last three years.

Apple and Samsung are losing share – tricky competing with so many non-profits – with their combined market share falling 4% last year to 35%

In third place is BBK with its two fast-growing brands Vivo and Oppo both of which grew almost 90% last year.

Unit volumes in millions are: Samsung 310, Apple 215 and BBK 170.

The top ten China companies had a combined 39% market share last year – up from 36% in 2015 and 32% in 2014 shipping 587 smartphones.

But they have a long way to go before they make money. They need to make their own chips, they probably need to develop their own OS and they need to develop some innovative functions if they are ever going to do that.This is a funny old game. Motorola's share slipped from 21% to 6% between 2009 and 2006; Blackberry's share went from 50% to zero between 2009 and 2016; Nokia's share went from 50% in 2007 to 3% in 2013.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

Source: China Gains Smartphone Share But Sucks Up Losses