Chinese phones are taking over Southeast Asia while domestic market shrinks: report

Huawei, Oppo, and Xiaomi came in the top 5, after Samsung and Apple, in the Southeast Asia region during Q3 2017, according to data from research firm Gartner. Among them, Xiaomi’s phone shipments grew nearly 80%, and the market share increased from 4% last year to 7% (in Chinese).

Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are the top four domestic smartphone makers in the third quarter in their home ground mainland China, and they started to get a grip of the Southeast Asian market in recent years. According to IDC data, Oppo accounted for the second-largest sales volume in 2016 with 13.2% market share, with shipments up 137.5% YoY. ASUS and Huawei each took third and fourth, with 5.9% and 5.1% respectively.

The latest figures from Strategy Analytics reported that in the third quarter of 2017, Oppo was the second largest market player in Southeast Asia with 17.2% market share, followed by the other Chinese mobile phone brand Vivo, taking 4.6% market share.

The report pointed out that global smartphone shipments in the third quarter to be able to achieve a 3% year-on-year growth, thanks to strong growth in Asia Pacific emerging markets and North American markets.

On the other hand, China’s smartphone market is shrinking. Comparing the third quarter figures for 2016 and 2017, smartphone sales in Greater China dropped from 32.3% to 27.9% in the global market, while the share of emerging markets in Asia Pacific rose from 19.1% to 21.3%.