26 May, 2017
The growth reflects the aggressive marketing tactics from the Chinese brands as well as changing attitudes from consumers, who are spending more money on better quality phones, according to Gartner research director Anshul Gupta.
The shift in buyer preference is positively affecting China-based vendors such as Huawei, Oppo and Vivo in their strategy to build desirable features at affordable prices.
The news comes after we revealed on Tuesday that sales of Apple's iPhone in the key Chinese market slipped by almost nine percent in the first three months of 2017.
China's smartphone brands Huawei, Oppo and Vivo are on the rise, stealing market share from Samsung and Apple, accounting for one quarter of the global market. "Similar to Samsung, Apple is increasingly facing fierce competition from Chinese brands Oppo and Vivo, among others, and its performance in China is under attack", said Gupta. Apple's iOS market share, on the other hand, has declined from 14.8 percent in Q1 of last year to 13.7 percent in the first quarter of this year.
A total of 380 million smartphones were shipped worldwide between January and March, compared with 348.2 million during the same period in 2016. "Although Samsung announced that pre-orders for the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are up 30 percent year on year, the absence of an alternative to Galaxy Note 7 and the fierce competition in the basic smartphone segment are leading Samsung to continuously lose market share", research direction at Gartner, Anshul Gupta said in a statement. Both companies saw their quarterly shipments fall compared to the same period previous year with their rivals Huawei, Oppo and Vivo all showing solid growth over the same period.
Another Chinese brand, Vivo, holds fifth place with a 6.8 percent market share and 25.8 million smartphone shipments. With other OSs struggling for momentum, Android grew its share by 2 percent.
It said Android continues to be the dominant mobile operating system with an 86.1 percent market share, up from an 84.1 percent share in the first quarter of 2016. Growing acceptance of Chinese brands in the global markets, led by high-quality smartphones, is driving Android OS dominance.
According to Gartner's latest report, Android will likely see further growth thanks to Google's announcement last week of Android Go.
