For The First Time: Oppo becomes number 1 smartphone brand in China, Huawei slips

Huawei has been a leader in the smartphone market in China and the company is one number one choice among Chinese smartphone consumers. However, the U.S. sanctions have hit hard on Huawei’s smartphone business in the global market and the same effects can be seen on the domestic ground.

According to the latest report coming from CounterPointResearch, Oppo, a Chinese smartphone marker, has prevailed in the top spot in the market with over 20% of smartphone market share in January 2021. On the other hand, Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi remain competitive at 16%.

The data further reveals that Oppo’s sales grew 33% month-on-month (MoM) and 26% year-on-year (YoY) during the month.

This is a big shift and helped Oppo from the continued decline in Huawei’s smartphone business. However, the decline could be a result of a number of activities that happen in the past including:

Causes responsible for Huawei’s decline:

Huawei has been sanctioned by the U.S. Commerce Department since May 2019 and not allowed to purchase required components and technologies to build new products including the chipset and other important parts.

Also, Huawei can’t certify new products with Google Mobile Services (GMS), which is the main cause for its declining sales in the global market. On the other hand, GMS is not required in the Chinese smartphone market but the lack of meeting the production yield is still there due to the shortage of components.

To make the most of its depleting inventory of components, Huawei has shifted its focus more towards the premium segment, only selling products with higher margins. This has further left a gap in the mid-segment of the market.

The report also reveals that not only Oppo, but other smartphone companies including Xiaomi, Vivo, and Apple are also enjoying increasing market shares both online and offline. At its peak, Huawei had more than 10,000 retail.

To be mentioned, we cannot deny that the company has also separated from its former subsidiary, Honor, which helped it to sell more devices and kept Huawei’s position secured in the Chinese smartphone market.