Huawei Top Dog in Chinese Smartphone Market – So What Now?
Posted: October 28, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: canalys, china, Chinese new year, huawei, smartphone sales, smartphones, xiaomi Leave a comment
Huawei has leaped over local rival Xiaomi to take number one spot in China’s much prized smartphone market, according to Canalys. I covered the news for IDG Connect and asked Canalys VP analysis, Rachel Lashford, whether she thought the Middle Kingdom now belonged to domestic players.
She argued that the market has actually decelerated slightly of late (1% from 1H14 to 1H15) which has increased the pressure on all vendors – but Apple and Samsung are still flying the flag for the Rest of the World.
“Apple still has a very powerful brand in China and we expect to see the latest product launches to continue its popularity,” Lashford told me.
Samsung, meanwhile, has dropped from the top spot of a 15% share in 1H14 to fourth place (9%) a year later.
“But it is recovering in the high end and has really focused on investing in localised marketing messages,” Lashford added, by email. “Combined with recent restructuring of its channels, focusing on large retail and operators, it should be well equipped to keep the pressure up on its local competition.”
So what of Huawei and Xiaomi? The former’s rise has come on the back off a steady building out of online channels over the past two years and a focus on its offline channel presence. Aiming squarely at the mid-range ($200-500), it has increased investment in the brand to good effect, concentrated on quality and kept momentum with regular product updates.
Xiaomi, on the other hand, may have taken its eye off the ball by concentrating on wearables, TVs and other smart home kit. It will need a “refreshed flagship” in time for Chinese New Year to wrest back momentum, she claimed.
And what of the two vendors’ plans for international expansion? Well, half of Huawei’s sales already come from outside the massive China market. But Xiaomi will need more help to get it competing beyond the Great Firewall.
“Many vendors are hindered by the lack of patents and having the difficulties and expense of licensing those in order to enter markets like the US and Western Europe where these are adhered to, so this needs to be overcome,” claimed Lashford.
“As does the adoption of a successful channel strategy. Xioami’s focus has been directly online, but it will still likely need the expertise of distributors mobility businesses – like Tech Data and Ingram Micro – in order to navigate the complexities of bringing those products to market.”
Apple’s shipment struggles as market share sinks in China
Posted: February 20, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apple, apple china, china, china mobile, china smartphones, coolpad, cupertino, huawei, IDC, iphone, lenovo, market share, samsung, smartphone market, xiaomi Leave a comment
Last Friday I reported how China’s smartphone market had hit its first major slowdown in 27 months, as the growth engine of Asia slowly matures.
Well, I’ve been back to the analyst house where those stats came from to ask specifically who the biggest handset winners and losers are in China at the moment.
Unsurprisingly Samsung remains number one with a market share of 19 per cent, followed by local players Lenovo (13 per cent), Coolpad (11 per cent) and Huawei (10 per cent).
Apple rounded out the top five with a 7 per cent share – which various reports have shown was a one per cent improvement on the previous quarter and signs that things are picking up in China for the US giant.
Well, I’m not quite so sure. IDC senior research manager Melissa Chau told me that the biggest year-on-year movers were actually Lenovo (+57%), Coolpad (+36 per cent) and Huawei (+26 per cent). Samsung posted not unimpressive 20 per cent growth, but Apple’s year-on-year share actually dropped 2 per cent.
By comparison, its nearest rival, home-grown star Xiaomi, notched impressive 91 per cent growth to take sixth place with 6 per cent of the market.
So will Apple be worried? Well yes and no, according to Chau.
On the one hand the Cupertino giant has always been a high margin business, making way more money on handsets than Xiaomi and most of its Chinese rivals. To that extent it doesn’t need to shift smartphones in volumes quite so great.
However, the counter argument is that Apple needs to be seen as an attractive, popular platform, for the sake of its ecosystem.
“It is relevant to look at shipments because they affect Apple’s market power; it’s ability to attract developers,” Chau explained.
“Apple must walk a fine line making sure it doesn’t drop so far down that Android is the only ecosystem in China. It won’t be a risk it’s taking this or next year but it needs to watch [this trend]. That’s why it makes sense to launch a lower cost model there.”
You can’t argue with this logic. With Xiaomi’s low margin, high volume strategy potentially lifting it above Apple the last thing Cupertino wants is to be left floating outside of the leading pack, even if it is still hovering up revenue in one of its biggest markets.
Much has been written about the potential sales lift Apple’s recently announced deal with China Mobile – the world’s largest operator by subscriber numbers – will give it. However, as Chau told me, this might have been overplayed by some commentators – after all, we’re not talking about a new iPhone model here.
“Given the model has been out for some time I’m not sure the bump will be as significant as people are making out,” she argued. “The bump will come with the next iteration of the iPhone.”
All at Apple will be hoping that creates more buzz than its last major launch here. Or it could seriously be time to go back to the drawing board.
China’s Yulong Coolpad: One to watch for 2014?
Posted: January 6, 2014 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 4G, china smartphone, china wireless, coolpad, FDD_LTE, huawei, IDC, lenovo, LTE, samsung, shenzhen, TD-LTE, xiaomi, yulong, zte Leave a comment
In the world of Chinese smartphone makers the name on everyone’s lips at the moment is Xiaomi, but how many of you have heard of Yulong?
Well, it’s a name which may well become more familiar to tech-watchers in 2014 if its sales predictions for the year turn out to be more than the usual new year marketing hype.
The Shenzhen-based firm, which is slightly better known under its Coolpad brand, said it’s hoping to shift 40 million 4G handsets this year in China, in addition to 20m 3G devices.
Some local media reports have the company claiming this will help it topple global leader Samsung in the 4G stakes, even though the Korean giant is currently way out in front in the Middle Kingdom with a market share of nearly 20 per cent – almost double that of Yulong.
They would appear to be a combination of mis-reporting and vendor hype, though, as Samsung told me it hasn’t even released any predictions on how many 4G handsets it will sell this year.
A Lenovo spokeswoman, meanwhile, said: “It’s not our practice to comment or make prediction on unannounced products.”
That aside, however, Coolpad has been gradually creeping up the smartphone rankings in its home country over the past few years, largely without the media attention that has greeted Huawei, ZTE, Lenovo and, of course, Xiaomi.
That might be because it has neither Xiaomi’s flair, Huawei’s big bucks, nor ZTE’s propensity to court controversy.
It’s currently third in the rankings just behind Lenovo, according to IDC stats for Q3 2013. If it’s to continue to climb it’ll need to make sure it’s competitively priced relative to Samsung, around the 1-2,000 RMB mark, IDC’s Bryan Ma told me.
Apart from that, “speed to 4G” will also count, he added. To this end, Yulong has already struck a deal with China Mobile to sell its TDD/FDD-LTE handset the Coolpad 8920 and there’ll certainly be more to follow.
So will the firm join Huawei, ZTE and others in aggressive overseas expansion? Well, it already is selling in markets like the US, but headway there has been more difficult given its low brand recognition.
It might have overtaken Apple in the Middle Kingdom last year but 2014 will be a tough year for Yulong and its parent company China Wireless to make an impact abroad – that is, outside of emerging markets where the appetite for cheap smartphones is greater.
China 2014: The Empire Strikes Back
Posted: December 19, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 2013 technology round-up, 2014 technology predictions, anti monopoly, APT1, china, cisco, coolpad, cyber espionage, deloitte fast 500, edward snowden, huawei, ibm, mandiant, meizu, oppo, qualcomm, US, xiaomi, zte Leave a comment
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. At least, if you’re an IT commentator or a vendor with “end of year round-up/next year predictions” stories to sell in to the media.
As a hack whose inbox has been deluged with this kind of dross for weeks now, I’m going to look ahead to 2014 with a more focused question, namely: “how will Western companies fare in China next year, and vice versa?”
Well, first up the signs aren’t looking good for US tech firms. Washington has turned up the anti-China rhetoric fiercely in 2013 and with high profile reports like Mandiant’s finally tying Beijing to cyber espionage, things were already looking tricky for US firms in China.
Then Edward Snowden happened – a gift from heaven for the Chinese government which can now portray itself as victim of spying, not a perp, with an even straighter face.
Expect the backlash to come from Beijing, partly because of this, but also because China has some world class companies of its own now, especially when it comes to networking equipment (Huawei and ZTE), PCs (Lenovo) and mobile devices (all of the above plus Xiaomi, Oppo, Meizu, Coolpad, etc etc), so it can afford to be more self-reliant.
IBM and HP have both announced they’re shedding jobs in the PRC, despite the strategic importance of the market.
IBM just announced a new cloud partnership which will see it team up with Azure partner 21 Vianet to provide managed private cloud capabilities to business customers there, however it admitted in October a 22 per cent sales slump in China. Ouch.
Cisco has seen a recent 6 per cent sales slump in China with John Chambers admitting on a November earnings call: “China continued to decline as we and our peers worked through the challenging political dynamic in that country.”
Then there’s Qualcomm, which counts China as a $1bn market, has worked with countless local OEMs to support their products and yet now finds itself at the centre of an anti-monopoly investigation which could see it fined in excess of $1bn.
The rule in Beijing seems to be; if you can’t beat ‘em (and China still has some way to go before its chip makers are world class), fine ‘em.
Expect more of the same next year.
So what of the great Chinese invasion? I spoke recently to Deloitte TMT partner William Chou about this.
In the hardware space historically only the likes of ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei had a chance to grow their offerings abroad, but with VC firms now splashing the cash, more innovative local firms will be able to invest in R&D and expand their footprint internationally, he argued.
Coolpad, Meizu and Xiaomi, to name but three, could be names to watch for 2014.
“There are a lot of these smartphone manufacturers but the ones which will be winners are not really the handset manufacturers but the ones which can combine hardware, software and internet services, like Xiaomi,” Chou told me.
Others he mentioned included a Shenzhen-based handset firm looking at JVs in France and South Africa and an unnamed private company “aggressively” looking to expand in the European market.
On the internet side there are fewer potential breakaway global brands which could make a real impact in 2014.
Tencent’s WeChat is definitely one of them, although Chou argued that Google-beater Baidu will struggle as it seeks to “re-engineer its business model from search to mobile internet”.
There are also a host of little-known software and online firms under-the-radar ready to pounce, including one of the China’s online travel giants which is looking to acquire in Germany, Chou revealed.
In fact, the recently announced Deloitte Fast 500 list of fastest growing APAC start-ups had more companies from the Middle Kingdom than any other represented, although none made the top ten.
Going into 2014 entrepreneurs who are able to “apply technology to other industries” will stand the best chance of success, Chou said.
“China has an ageing population and a one-child policy so healthcare is a serious problem, so how you apply e-health will be a trend,” he explained. “Another major challenge is pollution, so clean tech will be a major area for entrepreneurs to consider as well.”
Whatever happens, things are never quiet in this part of the world. Let’s see what you’ve got 2014.
No news is bad news for Apple in China
Posted: September 11, 2013 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: apple, china, china mobile, cupertino, forrester, huawei, iphone 5C, iphone 5S, iphone launch, lenovo, meizu, smartphone, xiaomi Leave a comment
So there it is. Apple’s much publicised Beijing iPhone launch event ended. With no news.
It appears that the fruit-themed company, while claiming that China will be its biggest market soon, does not believe it’s THAT important. At least yet. All the poor hacks were offered was a video of last night’s US launch. Ouch.
More importantly for Cupertino, the prices it has stuck on its new 5C and 5S devices will mean only the most hardy fanboys and girls will want to buy them. The iPhone 5C is definitely not budget, so it will fail to appeal to the mass low-end market currently consuming smartphones in China and India like there’s no tomorrow.
A 5C will retail for between 4,488 and 5,288 yuan ($733-864, £466-549). Compare this with the price for the high-end 5S in the US ($649-849) and you can see why some commentators reckon it will fail in the PRC.
It’s certainly not enough to beat Xiaomi’s impressively spec’d Mi-3 at 1,999 yuan ($326).
Forrester analyst Bryan Wang told me that it needs to come down to 2,999-3,499 yuan in order to “eat up the market share” of the likes of Huawei, Lenovo and Meizu, but that at present prices, the local Android players will be “really relieved”.
However, Apple is likely to have left itself some breathing room. It’s plan? Test the market out with these inflated prices and then “lower the price after a couple of months”.
Apple’s other hope of gaining much needed market share in China come from a possible tie up with the world’s largest operator, China Mobile, which has over 700 million subscribers.
No announcement was made at the Beijing press “conference” today but Wang believes it will come, when the carrier has a 4G network to announce. The reason? The 5C and 5S both support TD-LTE, a standard China Mobile helped to build.
phil muncaster 