Leading smartphone brands have tightened their grip of urban China market. In the three months ending October 2017, the top five brands – Huawei (including sub-brand Honor), Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo and OPPO – made up 91% of smartphone sales in urban China, compared to 79% a year earlier, according to the latest smartphone OS data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

China, a market once overrun with new challengers, is maturing.

“Chinese challenger brands like Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE, and Lenovo were once on the same trajectory as like of Xiaomi, but any momentum they once had has abruptly stopped, with many struggling to get past a 1% share,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Samsung’s performance in China continues to deteriorate, with its share now down to just 2.2% of that market.”

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech carries out monthly panel surveys among Chinese urban mobile phone users to monitor the market share changes of various brands. In China, the panel size is 22,000. Panellists were recruited from tier-1 to 5 cities and each year more than 260,000 surveys were conducted. The nature of the research methodology means it can cover the influence of smartphones sold in other countries ended up in China and avoid the confusion caused by unsold phones stocked at warehouses of distributors.

Digging deeper into the data, we can see that Xiaomi and Honor both realized significant growth in August – October period. Xiaomi’s sales market share jumped to 20.1%, 1 percentage point higher than in the May – July circle. However, due to its previously lacklustre performance, currently only 13.8% of all urban smartphone users are using Xiaomi, 2.1 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Honor’s share was 11.7% in August – October, also 1 percentage point higher than in May – July circle. Among all urban smartphone users, 9.8% are using Honor, 1.3 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Among the top 20 best-selling models during August – October period, eight are from Xiaomi or Honor.

Even though “price” is the biggest advantage of both brands when people making their purchasing decision, Xiaomi and Honor have both managed to achieve higher selling prices. Between August and October, the average selling price of Xiaomi models is 1,640.32 yuan, 321.96 yuan higher than a year ago; that of Honor phones is 2,136.66 yuan, 506.53 yuan higher than a year ago.

It’s a bittersweet period for Apple. Urban China remained a bright spot for Apple, with its share edging up 0.5 percentage point in the latest three months to reach 17.4%.

But globally, iOS share fell in key markets, making clear the impact of the flagship iPhone X not being available to buy in the month of October.

Dominic said: “It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform.

“Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them,” he said.

He added: “As of October 2017, 35.3% of Apple’s installed base customers across Europe and the United States had owned their iPhones for more than two years – up from 30.1% a year earlier and signifying considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base. In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models.”

China smartphone market in Q3 2017; 4 out of 10 using Huawei or iPhone

China’s ZTE overtook its rival Huawei as the biggest filer of international patent applications via WIPO in 2016 according to WIPO.

Overall, applicants based in the US maintained their number one ranking for the 39th year running, accounting for roughly a quarter (24.3%) of the 233,000 applications filed under WIPO’s Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) in 2016 with a 7.3% year-on-year increase, followed by applicants in Japan (19.4%) and China (18.5%).

China-based filers are behind much of the growth in international patent and trademark filings, making great strides in internationalizing their businesses as the country continues its journey from ‘Made in China’ to ‘Created in China’.

said WIPO Director General Francis Gurry.

In 2016, U.S. based applicants filed 56,595 PCT applications, followed by applicants from Japan (45,239) and China (43,168), which has posted double-digit growth each year since 2002.

If this current trend continues, China will overtake the U.S. within two years as the largest user of the PCT System. China and India (1,529) are the only two middle-income countries among the top 15 origins.

U.S. applicants (7,741) filed the largest number of international trademark applications using WIPO’s Madrid System for the International Registration of Marks in 2016, closely followed by Germany (7,551), France (4,132), China (3,200; +68.6%) and Switzerland (3,074).

Mobile smart devices in China reached 1.37 bn units in Q4 2016

The top three smartphone brands in September 2016 are Huawei (22%), Vivo (15%), and Oppo (13%) according to Dixintong, China’s largest mobile phone retailer.

Top 20 Smartphone Models in Sep 2016

1. Oppo R9M
2. Huawei Maimang5
3. Vivo X7
4. Oppo A59m
5. Huawei P9
6. Huawei G9
7. Vivo V3MA
8. Vivo X7Plus
9. Huawei P9 Plus
10. Honor8
11. ZTE A510
12. Huawei Mate8
13. Huawei Changxiang5
14. Xiaomi Redmi Note4
15. Moto Z Play
16. Huawei Changxiang 5S
17. Vivo X7 Plus
18. Honor Changwan5
19. Oppo A37M
20. Coolpad 5270

Global smartphone shipments totaled 1.167 billion units in 2014, a YoY increase of 25.9%, with combined shipments of Chinese brands reaching 453.4 million units, 39% of the global shipments and representing six of the top ten smartphone brands worldwide according to TrendForce.

Samsung (326.4 million units) and Apple (191.3 million units, up 24.5%) shipments together accounted for 518 million units, over 44% of global shipments.

With the completed acquisition of Motorola from Google in Q4 2014, Lenovo’s total shipments in 2014 exceeded 90 million units and its annual growth surpassed 100%. It ranked first place among Chinese smartphone vendors and third worldwide with its 7.9% global market share.

With approximately 70 million units shipped and an annual growth around 70%, Huawei was ranked fifth in 2014 worldwide smartphone shipments.

Xiaomi, ranked by BCG as the most innovative Chinese company, annual shipment growth exceeded 200% with 60 million units shipped in 2014, ranked sixth worldwide in 2014.

Also read: The Art of Social E-Commerce That Xiaomi Taught Us

Read more: https://www.chinainternetwatch.com/?s=xiaomi#ixzz3PS8kmyKd

The report shows that 70% of Xiaomi buyers were smartphone users prior to purchasing Xiaomi, among which 20% are already Xiaomi users from Jan to May 2014. Among Xiaomi mobile phone buyers, less than 5% gave up iPhone. But Xiaomi phones have much more impact on other smartphone sales.

Among new Xiaomi phone buyers, 17% were Samsung users, 21% from domestic brands (Huawei, Lenovo, Oppo, ZTE, and Coolpad), and 18% were Nokia users.

Xiaomi sold 18.7 million mobile phones in 2013 out of 42.8 million units total sales in China. It held annual products conference in Beijing last week and released its latest smartphone Mi4.

The same report indicates that the top three smartphone features used in China are music, photo taking, and gaming.

Since the launch of iPhone 5S/5C, according to Canalys, Apple surpassed Chinese manufacturers ZTE and MIUI to rank the fifth in China smartphone market in Q3 2013.

Nicole Peng, Research Director of Canalys China, said that in Q3, iPhone shipment increased by 32% quarterly, the total market share reached 6%.

However, Apple’s competitor Samsung’s shipment increased more than 100%, and its market share reached 21% in China. iPhone’s new 5S and 5C were launched on September 20, so the statistics in Q3 could not completely reflect Apple’s market performance.

Lenovo ranked the second with 13% in Q3 2013, followed by Coolpad with 11%. Huawei ranked the fourth with 9% market share. ZTE dropped to the seventh with 5%.