Samsung Losing its Lead in China Smartphone Market

Thanks to Chinese website t.qianzhan, we’ve learned that the kings Samsung are almost being dethroned. Since opening up their sales in China back in 2002, Samsung smart phone market share has seen a significant decline in recent years. Currently sitting at 13.5% of the market share, Chinese-Domestic brand Millet has almost caught up with a rating of 10.8% and Lenovo is close on it’s heels with 10.7%.

We’ve been reporting of the Chinese smart phone market being in some hot water. Sony’s sales have drastically plummeted and the Chinese public have shown that they are starting to lean towards the cheaper domestic made offerings, rather than shelling out the money for the big company offerings. As according to China’s mobile phone market quality monitoring report 2014, here’s what the second quarter of phone sales looked like:

• Samsung 13.5% (Dropping from 15.4% in Q1)
• Millet 10.8%
• Lenovo 10.7%
• Huawei 8.3%
• Apple 6.9%

Although Samsung is still sitting at the top, they’re on a steady decline – dropping 1.9% from Q1 to Q2 alone. Samsung’s original market dominance is said to be due to their wide range of phone offerings – trying to supply many different models suitable for consumers of various pay grades and needs. However, this adds a premium cost to their whole product line, especially when they’re the number two spender in the world for research and development, as we reported yesterday.

Apparently their constant release of copious smartphone models has been causing a large amount of friction in local Samsung offices, constantly trying to compete with Chinese-Domestic brands like Millet but being frustratingly unable to do so due to the locals low-overhead and domestic dominance. We will continue to report on the seemingly-broken Chinese smart phone market as the story develops.

Image courtesy of TechMac