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China's top smartphone makers have grabbed a bigger slice of the global market to fill the vacuum left by Samsung’s combustible Galaxy Note 7.
Market researcher IDC said the combined smartphone sales of Huawei, Oppo and Vivo surpassed Samsung in the third quarter, and Strategy Analytics said Samsung held on to its top position for the July-September period but its lead over the three Chinese rivals dwindled to just 0.4 percentage points.
Samsung hopes to regain traction with the Galaxy S8 early next year.
According to IDC, Samsung sold 72.5 million phones in the third quarter, down more than four million compared to the second quarter. Typically, third quarter sales are higher.
Apple, which was expected to benefit the most from the Note 7 debacle, has been unable to boost output to meet demand.
Instead Chinese makers are aggressively expanding their market share. Third-ranked Huawei’s third-quarter sales rose 23 percent on-year, and Nos. 4 and 5 Oppo and Vivo posted more than 100 percent growth.
IDC said Chinese smartphone makers triumphed with premium models that are cheaper than the leading players'.
Competition is growing from within their own ranks. Last year China's top three smartphone makers were Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi, but this year Oppo and Vivo have pushed the last two aside.
One IT industry source from S.Korea said, "Chinese smartphone makers survived cut-throat competition in their own market and are now looking to expand overseas."
Samsung hopes to widen its lead again with the S8, which is to feature cutting-edge technology for voice-activation and other functions.
Samsung recently bought the U.S. startup Viv Labs, whose voice assistant program is designed to accept natural language commands to perform everyday tasks.
(THE CHOSUNILBO)
