Up and coming Chinese smartphone makers are expected to put more pressure on device titan Huawei this year thanks to sustained production growth.
According to a new report from TrendForce, OPPO and Vivo are both expected to surpass 40 percent year-over-year growth in production volume in 2016, with OPPO reaching 59.2 percent growth. Huawei, by contrast, is expected to see just over 10 percent production volume growth.
OPPO and Vivo’s volume totals are expected to remain well below Huawei’s, however, at 78,000 and 66,000, respectively, to Huawei’s 119,000.
Another Chinese brand, LeEco, is also expected to make gigantic strides in growth this year. Production volumes from the upstart are expected to leap from five million in 2015 to 20 million this year, for year-over-year growth of more than 300 percent.
While the production figures of other Chinese vendors lag behind Huawei’s, TrendForce said the growth figures highlight a rapidly-changing market.
“The Chinese market is ever-changing,” TrendForce smartphone analyst Avril Wu said. “Short product lifecycle and fierce competition lead to constant shifts in the production volume ranking for domestic brands. Lenovo and Xiaomi were Chinese smartphone leaders in 2014, and then Huawei became the No. 1 domestic brand 2015 by registering an annual production volume of over 100 million units. This year, however, OPPO and Vivo have taken the spotlight in the home market.”
Earlier this year, Huawei declared it is aiming to become the top selling smartphone vendor in the world. The company currently sits in third place behind Apple and Samsung with around 8.2 percent of the market share, but said it has ambitions to overtake both within the next five years.
In mid-June, Huawei revealed sales of its new P9 flagship handsets had surpassed 2.6 million units in the first six weeks after their launch. The company also said first quarter global device shipments of 28.3 million units were up 64 percent year over year.