Chinese phones gain 24% share in global market

China's phone makers gained a record 24 percent market share in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter, a research firm said.

But U.S. President Donald Trump's new trade policies may crush Chinese companies like ZTE and Lenovo, which holds about 10 percent of the market share in the US, according to research firm Canalys.

The worldwide smartphone market sales reached 400 million units in the fourth quarter, with Apple, Samsung, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo the five biggest sellers. Apple replaced Samsung at the top after Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco.

Third-placed Huawei grew 39 percent to reach 45 million units, exceeding 10 percent market share for the first time this quarter.

Oppo and Vivo made up the top five as BBK Electronics' top brands maintained their pressure on the leading trio.

Huawei, Oppo and Vivo are increasingly making their presence felt internationally with a combined global market share of 24 percent, up from 16 percent in the same quarter a year ago, said Jia Mo, Canalys' Shanghai-based analyst.

But with Trump threatening to raise tariffs, it could hit the Chinese vendors hard in the US.

It also raises questions about the future of Lenovo and ZTE, which have seen about 10 percent growth in the US.

　　

Source: Chinese phones gain 24% share in global market

Full Year 2016 Smartphone Market Top 10 Numbers, and OS platforms and Global Installed Base, all here. Oh, and Q4 market data as well

Its time to do the full-year smartphone numbers. I think we have just about all the data that will be made public, as increasingly many of the major players don't release smartphone unit sales numbers, and even the number of major analyst houses who used to provide a lot of data has shrunk to two who reliably do that anymore (IDC and Strategy Analytics). So we will do our best. We do get the total market size simply as the average of the big 2 analyst houses. For Q4 that number is 433.6 Million units. It is a growth of 8% vs the same quarter one year ago. But as our industry experienced its first-ever recession earlier in the past year and for two quarters year-on-year sales actually declined, the total year turned up with only slight growth of 3%. We end the year 2016 with still not quite 1.5B smartphones sold, we reached 1,481 million, ie 1.48 Billion. So lets start with the big tables everybody wants. The Top 10 smartphone brands for year 2016:

2016 FULL YEAR SMARTPHONE SALES STATISTICS

Rank . Brand . . . . 2016 units . . Share . . 2015 units . . Share . . 2014 units . . Share

1 (1)  . Samsung  . . 308.9 M . . . . 20.8% . . 322.0 M . . . 22.4% . . .314.2 M . . . 24.2% 2 (2)  . Apple  . . . . . 215.4 M . . . . 14.5% . . 231.4 M . . . 16.1% . . 192.7 M . . . 14.8%3 (3)  . Huawei . . . . 139.0 M . . . . 9.4% . . 108.0 M . . . . 7.5% . . . 75.0 M . . . . 5.8%4 (8)  . Oppo . . . . . . . 91.0 M . . . . 6.1% . . 50.0. . . . . . . 3.5%  . . . . - - - . . . . . . - - - 5 (-) . . Vivo . . . . . . . . 73.0 M . . . . 4.9% . . . . - - - . . . . . . - - -  . . . . - - - . . . . . . - - -6 (7)  . ZTE . . . . . . .  57.0 M . . . . 3.8% . . 57.2 M . . . . 4.0%  . . 46.1 M . . . . 3.5%7 (6)  . LG  . . . . . . . . 55.1 M . . . . .3.7% . . 59.7 M . . . . 4.2% . . . 59.1 M . . . . 4.5%8 (5)  . Xiaomi . . . . . . 54.3 M . . . . 3.7%. . 71.0 M . . . . .4.9%. . . . 61.1 M . . .  . . 4.7% 9 (4)  . Lenovo  . . . . . 53.1 M . . . . 3.6% . . 76.3 M . . . . 5.3% . . . 95.2 M . . . . 7.3%10 (10) . TCL-Alcatel . 38.0 M . . . . 2.6% . . 43.5 M . . . . .3.2%. . . . 41.4 M . . .  . . 3.2% Other . . . . . . . . . . . 396.5 M . . . . 26.8%TOTAL . . . . . . . . .1,480.9 M . . . . . . . . . 1,437.3 M . . . . . . . . .1,300.6 MSource: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2016This data may be freely used and repeated

There's the big table for you. The top three are stable, have been the same now for two years so Huawei was the company able to break that dangerous 'third place jinx' that seemed to doom so many rivals who were once in third place during the 'smartphone bloodbath years' we had early in this decade. Vivo is the big newcomer jumps in at number 5 and Oppo (part of the same family) is at number 4. Xiaomi never was a serious threat for world domination, and now is lingering in 8th place and doing so badly, the company stopped reporting quarterly unit sales figures. Lenovo is struggling to get traction out of its Motorola brand, LG is back to making losses with its handset business and TCL went and bought Blackberry rights after it previously had acquired Alcatel and Palm brands. The one nearly invisible mid-tier player that is solidly doing a decent job but nobody talks about them is ZTE, riding its carrier relationships and selling smarpthones and climbed one rank from 7th to 6th place.

What can I say? The 'thrill' of the bloodbath and astonishing turmoil in the Top 10 has long since passed. This is a three-horse game, Samsung, Apple and Huawei are set in their positions and that won't change in the next year, there is too much distance between the three players and the rest of the field that tries to climb up. The fight in the mid-tier is jockeying for position but thats a cut-throat Android price war going on there, same type of phones with same specs and no real loyalty anywhere. Chinese brands may climb fast on their domestic market if they have a hit phone (see Xiaomi) and then are unable to turn that into the same success globally because of .. carrier relations (see Xiaomi). And even former powerful brands like say Lenovo's Motorola or TCL's Palm (and now Blackberry) can't turn a player into an overnight success. It takes years to build the global footprint even if you are Apple (who managed it in four years) so don't expect Oppo or Vivo or any next tier player like a Meizumi or any other brands from other countries like say Karbonn or Micromax from India, to have any fast success either, even if they make it into the Top 10. If you want to watch someone, it is how Oppo does. Can it follow in Huawei's footprints (Huawei was at about the same market share two years ago). I doubt it but they're about the only interesting story in this Top 10. And outside the Top 10? HTC continues to play its long-form death. Google's Pixel hahahahaha yeah that was funny when some said they thought Google would be challenging Apple and Samsung. But the outsider to watch is. Nokia. Return has started. The only Android phone model already being sold, did over a million units of sales in Chi na in its first week. HMD the company now running the Nokia phone brand will be showing several phones in Barcelona this month at the big mobile industry event, and they will likely have half a dozen Android smartphone models by the end of the year, sold in most major markets where Nokia used to be strong. Nokia is the dark horse to watch this year, especially towards Q4. I'll give you more of my prognosis after we see the official announcements of their first phones later this month.

So that was the Top 10 brands. What about smartphone OS systems? No race there. For the year it was 84% Android, 15% iOS and less than 1% for all the other brands to share with none getting even large enough to hit 0.5% so we could round-off the number to a pretend-one-percent share. This part of the smartphone 'race' has been settled years ago as I wrote on this blog.

INSTALLED BASE

The most useful info out of this blog article series continues to be the installed base calculation, t hat nobody else is reporting. What is the total installed base of smartphones in use, rather than what numbers were sold in the past quarter; and more importantly for any developers, what is the SHARE of the installed base, by OS platforms.

2016 FULL YEAR OPERATING SYSTEM MARKET SHARES

Rank . . OS . . . . . . . . .  2016 units . . share . . .2015 units . . share . . 2014 units . . share1 (1) . .  Android  . . . . 2,560 M . . . . 80% . . 2,079 M . . . . . 79% . . 1,696 M . . . . . 77%2 (2) . .  iOS . . . . . . . . . 602 M . . . . 19% . . . 505 M . . . . . 19% . . . 406 M . . . . . 18%Others  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 M . . . . . 1% . . . . . 56 M . . . . . . 2% . . 108 M . . . . . . . 5%TOTAL  . . . . . . . . . . . 3,193 M . . . . . . . . . . . 2,640 M  . . . . . . . . . . 2,210 MSource: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2016This data may be freely used and repeated

So the smartphone installed base is almost at 3.2 Billion. One in five smartphones in use worldwide is an iPhone, the other 4 out of 5 are Androids. To find ANY other smartphone OS, your chances are 1 in 100, and thats then more likely to be an ancient smartphone clutched by a loyal Nokia brand fanatic on the ancient Symbian OS, or an equally fanatical Blackberry user. Even less likely, but in some places, like in India it may perhaps be a Tizen user. And there is essentially no chance you'll find a Windows user who isn't actually working for Microsoft or is one of its suppliers.

Let me say here that if these numbers are not good enough for you - remember this is a free blog, no registration and no advertising to bug you either - nobody else gives this depth of data for free about smartphone market size - then please yes, do get yourself the brand new TomiAhonen Phone Book. It has all data fresh from one month ago, effective December 2016. For a mere 10 Euros, it has over 10 0 charts and tables of every conceivable statistic you could hope to find. Screen sizes, camera resolutions, NFC, GPS, Bluetooth, everything you could hope to know about the handset market globally and by regions as well. See table of contents and ordering page here: TomiAhonen Phone Book 2016.

(For those who only occasionally visit this blog, note that the previous year's installed base numbers are lower in last year's edition of this statistical summary. We did a recalibration of the installed base numbers last year when some international user data came out. These numbers are the best ones I have, please ignore the old blogs which used the older data model).

Ok, then all we have left to do is for the serious statistical propeller-heads, the Q4 numbers as well.

BIGGEST SMARTPHONE MANUFACTURERS BY UNIT SALES IN Q4 2016

Rank . . . Manufacturer . Units . . . Market Share . Was Q3 2016 1 (2) . . . Apple  . . . . . . . 78.3 M . . 18.0% . . . . . . . ( 12.3% )  2 (1) . . . Samsung . . . .  77.5 M . . 17.9% . . . . . . . ( 19.8% ) 3 (3) . . . Huawei  . . . . . . 44.9 M . . 10.4% . . . . . . . (   9.1% ) 4 (4) . . . Oppo . . . . . . . . 30.6 M . . . 7.1% . . . . . . . (   6.5% )5 (5) . . . Vivo . . . . . . . . . 24.3 M . . . 5.6% . . . . . . . (   5.3% ) 6 (8) . . . ZTE  . . . . . . . . 22.6 M . . . 5.2% . . . . . . . (   3.7% )7 (7) . . . Lenovo .  . . . . . 16.5 M . . . 3.8% . . . . . . . (   3.8% )8 (6) . . . Xiaomi . . . . . . .15.2 M . . . 3.5% . . . . . . .  (   3.9% )9 (9) . . . LG  . . . . . . . .  . 14.2 M . . . 3.3% . . . . . . . (   3.6% ) 10 (10) . TCL/Alcatel . . .  10.5 M . . . 2.4% . . . . . . . (  2.5% ) Others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99.2 MTOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433.8 M

Source: TomiAhonen Consulting Analysis 2 February 2017, based on manufacturer and industry dataThis table may be freely shared 

There you go. The industry numbers all here. Top 10 brands and OS platf orm wars and installed base. Bookmark this page and send your friends, its the only place that has all the market share data in one place. And I report these numbers every quarter here, so expect the next update in April for Q1 of 2017. Last year's numbers are here if you need it.

And yes, if you need more data on the handset market - best data source on the planet is the TomiAhonen Phone Book 2016. Get it while it's hot.

Source: Full Year 2016 Smartphone Market Top 10 Numbers, and OS platforms and Global Installed Base, all here. Oh, and Q4 market data as well

OPPO A57 Smartphone with 16MP Front Camera Launched at Rs. 14,990

In this selfie world, OPPO is one of the very first manufacturers to capitalize on the selfie feature by launching quite a few smartphones with higher resolution front cameras. In November last year, the company launched the OPPO A57 mid-range smartphone in China. The device is priced at 1,599 Yuan (approx Rs. 16,000) and packs decent specifications. Today, the company launched the same OPPO A57 in the Indian market for Rs. 14,990 and will be on sale starting from February 3rd. It comes in Gold color option and sports unibody metal design with rounded corners.

The device sports a 5.2-inch IPS display with HD (1280 x 720 pixels) resolution and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4. Under the hood is the Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and coupled with Adreno 505 GPU. The OPPO A57 also packs 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that can be further expanded upto 256GB via MicroSD card slot. It runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow based in-house ColorOS 3.0 out of the box and we can't expect the Android Nougat update anytime soon.

The USP of the OPPO A57 lies in its camera department, it features a 13MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, PDAF, and LED flash. While on the front is a whopping 16MP selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture. It is backed by a 2,900mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging using the patented VOOC flash charge technology. The physical home button on the front also come integrated with a fingerprint sensor. There are also few other sensors including E-compass, Distance sensor, Light sensor and a G-sensor.

Connectivity options like 4G, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, USB OTG, 3.5mm Audio port, and a MicroUSB 2.0 port. It supports dual SIM dual standby and offers VoLTE for using with the Jio 4G SIM. The OPPO A57 measures 149.1 x 72.9 x 7.65 mm and weighs 147 grams. OPPO is also offering a protective case for free within the package. Last week, another Chinese company, Vivo launched the high-end selfie-centric smartphone called Vivo V5 Plus with 20MP + 8MP dual front cameras along with LED flash.

It is priced at Rs. 27,980 and sports a premium build quality with an all-metal unibody design. On the rear is a 16MP camera with LED flash. At this price, the device comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display, Snapdragon 625 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. It runs on fully customized Funtouch 3.0 OS based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and is powered by a 3160mAh battery. The Vivo V5 Plus goes on sale starting from February 1st while the OPPO A57 will be available two days later on February 3rd. Stay tuned on PhoneRadar for more updates.

Source: OPPO A57 Smartphone with 16MP Front Camera Launched at Rs. 14,990

'Apple topples Samsung as top global smartphone player in Q4'

NEW DELHI: Tech giant Apple has toppled Korean electronics' major Samsung to become the numero uno player in the global smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2016, shipping 78.3 million iPhones, according to research firm Counterpoint.

"Apple had a record quarter shipping 78.3 million iPhones in all important holiday season, surpassing Samsung (78 million) in overall smartphone market share," it said.

Apple had a market share of 17.8 per cent, while Samsung had 17.7 per cent share in the October-December 2016 quarter.

Huawei, Oppo and vivo followed in the tally with market share of 10.2 per cent, 6.9 per cent and 4.8 per cent, respectively.

For the whole 2016 year, Samsung, however, continued to led the smartphone market with a market share of 21 per cent. Its smartphone shipments declined 4 per cent year-on-year, registering 310 million units during the year.

Interestingly, the US, China and India alone contributed to almost 50 per cent of the total sm artphone shipments in 2016.

Smartphone shipments reached 1,512 million units in CY 2016, of which 440 million units smartphones were shipped in the fourth quarter alone.

"The global smartphone market grew by a modest three per cent y-o-y in CY 2016 with major brands such as Apple and Samsung seeing an annual decline in growth," CounterPoint Research Research Analyst Shobhit Srivastava said.

He added that bulk of the growth was driven by three major Chinese brands -- Huawei, Oppo and vivo -- which combined grew a healthy 57 per cent y-o-y shipping more than 300 million units globally.

"2016 was the inflection point for LTE as a technology as it scaled down to lower price points (sub-USD 75). LTE adoption was much faster compared to any other previous cellular technologies as the total LTE smartphone demand crossed a billion units in 2016," Counterpoint Research Associate Director Tarun Pathak said.

Source: 'Apple topples Samsung as top global smartphone player in Q4'

Oppo R9 overtakes the iPhone as the best selling smartphone in China, says report

Oppo R9 overtakes the iPhone as the best selling smartphone in China, says report

Once upon a time the American tech giant Apple dominated the Chinese tech market with its iPhone devices and sold millions and millions of handset in the country, but recently, according to the "Counterpoint Research" report, it shows that during the last five years Apple couldn't clinch its first position in the Chinese market.

Sales have been low since 2012

The report says that since 2012 iPhone's sale in China has been decreasing enormously, even last year the company managed to sell just 12 million iPhones 6s devices in China. The counterpart mentioned that "Apple with slowing traction for its flagship iPhone 6S during last year saw its double-digit negative growth being somewhat offset by relatively healthy demand for the newer flagship iPhone 7 series in Q4 2016."

Oppo R9

So, who is the king? Well, right now Oppo the Chinese tech giant is the king of the Chinese market as the research says that last year the company managed to sell nearly 17 million of its Oppo R9 smartphone devices in the country, five million more than the Apple's iPhones.

The Counterpart Research also addressed that Oppo is one of the fastest developing cell phone makers in China which has made its name through high-spec low-cost gadgets, being sold through blocks and mortar stores.

However, this year tech lovers are looking forward to Apple's next flagship which consumers are expecting that with regards to the iPhone's tenth anniversary, this year the company will surprise the world with its next flagship iPhone 8. If by any chance the device fails to conquer the tech lover's choice, then Apple's iPhones sales may decrease even more in China and around the world.

Source: Oppo R9 overtakes the iPhone as the best selling smartphone in China, says report

Oppo, Vivo lead in China; Xiaomi slips because of lack of innovation

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Oppo, Vivo lead in China; Xiaomi slips because of lack of innovation

Xiaomi, touted as the Apple of China, slipped to fourth spot in 2016 as the demand for its smartphones declined 22 percent annually in the country.

The key reason for the decline was Xiaomi's rivals racing ahead with key features, innovation, bigger marketing budgets and wider online and offline distribution channel during the year. Huawei, Oppo and Vivo emerged as clear winners with Oppo and Vivo registering significant growth.

The demand for smartphones in China remained healthy during the fourth quarter of 2016. Only five brands registered healthy growth during the full year. Oppo, Huawei, Vivo, Meizu and Gionee drove the majority of the volume, capturing a combined 58 percent of the total Chinese smartphone market.

Source: Oppo, Vivo lead in China; Xiaomi slips because of lack of innovation

OPPO A57 Smartphone with 16MP Front Camera to Launch in India on February 3rd

In this selfie world, OPPO is one of the very first manufacturers to capitalize on the selfie feature by launching quite a few smartphones with higher resolution front cameras. In November last year, the company launched the OPPO A57 mid-range smartphone in China. The device is priced at 1,599 Yuan (approx Rs. 16,000) and came with a metal built body along with decent configuration. Now, the company is all set to launch the same OPPO A57 in the Indian market on February 3rd. Though there are no other details mentioned about the device, we expect it to feature the same specifications as on the Chinese variant.

The OPPO A57 sports a 5.2-inch display with HD (1280 x 720 pixels) resolution and a 2.5D glass laid on top. Under the hood is the Snapdragon 435 octa-core processor clocked at 1.4GHz and coupled with Adreno 505 GPU. The OPPO A57 also packs 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that can be further expanded via MicroSD card slot. It runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow based in-house ColorOS 3.0 out of the box. The USP of the device lies in its camera department, it features a 13MP rear camera with f/2.2 aperture, PDAF, and LED flash. While on the front is a whopping 16MP selfie camera with f/2.0 aperture.

The device is backed by a 2,900mAh non-removable battery and supports fast charging suing the patented VOOC flash charge technology. The physical home button on the front also come integrated with a fingerprint sensor. It supports dual SIM dual standby and offers connectivity options like 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS, 3.5mm Audio port, and a MicroUSB 2.0 port. The OPPO A57 measures 149.1 x 72.9 x 7.65 mm and weighs 147 grams. Last week, another Chinese company, Vivo launched the high-end selfie-centric smartphone called Vivo V5 Plus with 20MP + 8MP dual front cameras along with LED flash.

It is priced at Rs. 27,980 and sports a premium build quality with an all-metal unibody design. On the rear is a 16MP camera with LED flash. At this price, the device comes with a 5.5-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display, Snapdragon 625 SoC, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of internal storage. It runs on fully customized Funtouch 3.0 OS based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow and is powered by a 3160mAh battery. The Vivo V5 Plus goes on sale starting from February 1st while the OPPO A57 will be launched two days later on February 3rd. The official details of the A57 including the specifications, pricing, availability can be confirmed only after its officially launch in India. Stay tuned on PhoneRadar for more updates.

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Source: OPPO A57 Smartphone with 16MP Front Camera to Launch in India on February 3rd