Ladies and gentlemen, may I announce to you that Oppo has the strongest rifle silencer I have ever come across. They have successfully and rather silently, shot at top dogs like Apple, Xiaomi and Huawei to the ground to emerge the top smartphone seller in the China smartphone market.
Oppo, in 2016, shipped 78.4 million phones – a market research company, International Data Corporation (IDC) revealed. This figure is twice more than what the Chinese OEM shipped in 2015 – 35.4 million smartphone units.
Coming in at second place is Huawei. With just 2.4 million units behind Oppo, Huawei gets the runner-up medal. Huawei shipped an impressive 76 million units of its devices produced. Vivo is the second runner up according to IDC’s report – another surprising sight. However, one should blame it on whatever it is the Vivo sales and marketing team did to double its shipments value in just 12 months, going from 35 million in 2015 to 69 million last year. That’s one helluva jump!
Mighty iPhone makers, Apple managed to trump Chinese giant, Xiaomi to sit at fourth place. Albeit it should be stated that Apple didn’t make much of an improvement in 2016 as its shipment quantity dropped from 58.4 million iPhones in 2015 to 44.9 million in 2016, a 23 percent drop.
Xiaomi is coming in at number 5, 3.4 million units behind Apple, also had a sullen 2016. A magnanimous drop from 64.9 million Mi phones (roughly 65 million) to selling 41.5 million devices in 2016 sure ascertain my point – a sullen 2016 it was for Xiaomi. The percentage drop of 36 percent is huge!
In reaction to the ranking, Tay Xiaohan, Senior Market Analyst, IDC Asia/Pacific’s Client Devices team, had this to say in a statement:
“Increased dependence on mobile apps has led to consumers to seek phone upgrades, thus helping drive the large growth in the fourth quarter of 2016. In lower-tiered cities, there was a similar demand by consumers, which Oppo and Vivo met by aggressively pushing mid-range smartphones in these cities,”
“The smartphone market in China saw a 19 per cent year-on-year growth and 17 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth fourth quarter of 2016. For the full year of 2016, the market grew by nine per cent with top Chinese smartphone vendors taking up a larger share of the market,”
Oppo is not a household name whenever smartphones are being discussed globally. But as Tay Xiaohan said, Oppo’s move of pushing mid-range smartphone devices that meet users demand into the market and a significant growth of the smartphone market itself contributed immensely to Oppo’s climb to the throne. They are certainly not anywhere near the level of popularity that brands like Apple, Xiaomi or Huawei have made for themselves over the years but they surely do know their onion. I guess the message this development passes is that Oppo is now a prospective brand with bright and outstanding future to watch out for.
