South Korean smartphone giant Samsung retained its top spot in smartphone shipments to emerging markets in Southeast Asia last 12 months, based on the International Data Corporation (IDC).
Emerging markets within the region include Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.
IDC in its statement today said that in 2017, Samsung’s shipment volume increased by 25.8 percent to 29.3 million units, followed by OPPO (up 29.3 percent to 17.2 million), Vivo (118 .2 percent more to 7.2 million) and Huawei (up 3.8 percent cents to five.4 million).
Apple, which ranked fifth, was the one smartphone maker in the highest five to see a decline in shipment volume, which fell 2.2 percent to 4.5 million units from 4.6 million units in 2016.
IDC says Samsung has the most important market share at 29.1 percent, followed by OPPO (17 percent), Vivo (7.2 percent), Huawei (5.4 percent) and Apple (4.4 percent). .
Meanwhile, IDC said total smartphone sales within the emerging Southeast Asia region fell barely last 12 months by 0.6 percent to 101.3 million units, driven by significant reductions in supplies from suppliers in Myanmar and the Philippines.
Several local and smaller players were found to be losing the competition, while the highest 4 players continued to consolidate their positions with a lineup of low-end ($100-$200) and mid-range ($200-$400) phones.
Jensen Ooi, IDC ASEAN senior market analyst (client devices), said that aside from the growing popularity of the highest 4 players who were able to keep up shipment volumes, most end-users were in no rush to purchase a brand new phone in the event that they were using mid-range phones that featured were of decent quality and had a significantly high price for this frugal region, leading to longer life cycles and substitute rates.
He said that going forward, local suppliers will proceed to feel the consequences of this transformation this 12 months as end-users regularly shift preferences towards more popular brands and are more willing to speculate within the shift to mid-range smartphones with larger screens.
“Most of them will soon include attractive features corresponding to dual cameras, thin bezels, in-device artificial intelligence (AI), and so forth.
“To remain competitive, we expect local vendors to also provide smartphones with some of these features and introduce Android Oreo “Go” devices, while maintaining a reasonable price point of lower than $200, which is able to meet the budget requirements of their manufacturers . local goal segments,” Ooi added.
Source : https://www.nst.com.my/business/2018/03/341713/samsung-tops-smartphone-market-emerging-sutheast-asia
