New Wave of Smartphone Vendors Making the Most of High Growth in Emerging Markets
The latest 2015 smartphone report from Futuresource verifies that market disruption in emerging markets caused by the wave of local smartphone vendors is showing no signs of dissipating. Well-known brands including HTC, Microsoft and Sony are all struggling to keep pace with the emergence of strong Chinese and Indian manufacturers.
This latest 2015 report explores the changing ecosystem, highlighting how new local vendors such as Xiaomi have celebrated continued growth (up 33% in
1H15) even after a massive growth spike of 231% in 2014. Its successful strategy, based on a strong online and social media presence and building customer engagement is further fuelled by flash sales, low price points for attractive handsets and key strategic distribution partnership deals. Other companies, such as Coolpad and Oppo in China, Micromax and Karbonn in India, Advan in Indonesia and Cherry Mobile in the Philippines are following suit, adding local celebrity endorsements to heighten consumer appeal.
In stark contrast companies like HTC, Microsoft and Sony are struggling to keep pace and are undertaking reorganisation, cost cutting and strategic review exercises in an effort to find a way to compete effectively in growth markets like South East Asia. Even the market leader, Samsung, albeit maintaining position through its scale, broad product range and huge marketing budget, dropped market share by 4.3%.
“There has been a significant amount of growth in the mobile handset market over recent years,” commented John Devlin, Futuresource Consulting.
“However, mature markets are nearing saturation. Migration from feature phones continues to gather momentum globally with countries like Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines all seeing smartphones outsell feature phones for the first time in 2014. This effect can be seen in the rapid gains made by these emerging brands.”
From a macro perspective the smartphone market showed slower growth in 2014 than in previous years for smartphones, which expanded by 23% to 1.3 billion units, compared to growth of 48% in 2013.
For further information or to purchase this report, please visit http://www.futuresource-consulting.com/2015-07-Smartphone-Vendors-7893.html
About Futursource Consulting
Futuresource Consulting is a specialist research and knowledge-based consulting company, providing organisations with insight into consumer electronics, digital imaging, entertainment media, broadcast, storage media, education technology and IT. With a heritage stretching back to the 1980s, the company delivers in-depth analysis and forecasts on a global scale, advising on strategic positioning, market trends, competitive forces and technological developments. www.futuresource-consulting.com
