Xiaomi Expanding Overseas Presence

With its share unlikely to see major changes in China’s smartphone market, Xiaomi has geared up expanding global presence, with Japan being its next target market.

Xiaomi is set to host a product launch event in Japan on December 9, marking its entry into the country’s smartphone market.

Xiaomi is a top-4 smartphone brand in China, but it is difficult for it to leapfrog the top vendor Huawei in the home market. Xiaomi has also been outperformed by Huawei in non-China markets, making 2020 a crucial year for Xiaomi to transofrm its strategy and business, according to industry observers.

Since Huawei’s shipments to non-China markets are expected to be significantly undermined by its smartphones lacking Google Mobile Service (GMS) support as a result of the US trade ban, vendors including Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are expected to take over some of Huawei’s overseas shares.

Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 8 series smartphones were launched on August 29 and saw strong sales in India, Indonesia and Europe, the observers said.

Huawei, despite the impact from the US-China trade tensions and fierce competition from Apple, Samsung Electronics and other China-based vendors, remains competitive in China’s smartphone market and will continue to enjoy shipment growth domestically in 2019, the observers said.

Huawei has been devoted to building its brand image in the past few years, looking to focus primarily on the mid-range to high-end segment to differentiate from its fellow competitors. The China-based brand has released many flagship models that target mainly enterprise and high-end markets.

Digitimes Research’s latest report on China’s smartphone market shows that the top-5 brands in China’s smartphone market were Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Apple, together accounting for 95% of the market’s overall shipments in the third quarter of 2019.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, China’s domestic demand for smartphone will remain weaker than that of the same quarter a year ago. However, Huawei and Apple are expected to see over 20% on-year shipment growths in the quarter, while the other three will all witness over 20% declines, Digitimes Research’s figures show.―Digitimes