Three of the world’s top five smartphone vendors are based in China, it emerged this week, serving up further proof – as if it were needed – of the country’s significance on the global telecoms stage.
According to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), 88.9% of the country’s 668 million Internet users connect via a mobile device. Smartphone penetration in China stood at 62% at the end of March, compared to 55% in Europe.
In short, if a company today wants to be a globally recognised smartphone maker, China is a good place to start, which perhaps helps to explain why the likes of Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo have risen to prominence in recent years.
According to numbers published by IDC on Friday, the second quarter saw the world’s second-highest quarterly smartphone shipments on record at 337.2 million units. While nearly half were made by OEMs that fall into the research firm’s ‘other’ category – which includes some big brands like HTC, LG and Sony – Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Xiaomi, and Lenovo all stood in the top five, together accounting for 64 million units (see chart).
Samsung and Apple, the top two biggest smartphone makers in the world, shipped 73.2 million and 47.5 million units respectively.
"The overall growth of the smartphone market was not only driven by the success of premium flagship devices from Samsung, Apple, and others, but more importantly by the abundance of affordable handsets that continue to drive shipments in many key markets," said Anthony Scarsella, research manager with IDC’s mobile phone team.
"As feature phone shipments continue to decrease, vendors will continue to attack both emerging and developed markets with competitive smartphones that are both rich in features and low in price," he said.
At the top end though, Apple appears to be doing a good job cementing its popularity in China, more than doubling its fiscal Q3 revenue there to US$13.2 billion from $6.2 billion.
However, domestic player Huawei turned in a similarly impressive set of quarterly results, reporting 124% growth in smartphone revenues in the three months ended 30 June. According to GFK, Huawei overtook Samsung and Apple to capture a 15.2% share of the Chinese market in June.
"While much of the attention is being paid to Apple and Samsung in the top tier, the smartphone market in fact continues to diversify as more entrants hit this increasingly competitive market," said Melissa Chau, senior research manager at IDC’s mobile phone team, who noted that IDC now tracks more than 200 different smartphone brands. "While the Chinese players are clearly making gains this quarter, every quarter sees new brands joining the market."
