Overall Q4 decline in 2018, Oppo overtakes Samsung

There is new data in an expert report that takes a look at the smartphone market in Thailand in Q4 2018. The competition between the key players, including Honor, Lava, Wiko and Xiaomi, has escalated in Southeast Asia.

There’s a tendency for users to hold on to their devices for longer periods, with an apparent 13.6% decrease in year-to-year compared to Q4 2017 and a total of 4.9 million devices shipped. Despite efficient promo campaigns conducted by Thai smartphone carriers, millions of rural users continue to use feature phones and do not intend to upgrade their devices in the foreseeable future.

The market share held by Oppo grew significantly (a strong 69.8% year to year), putting it at 22.2% market share, above Samsung’s 21.1%. The latter suffered a 36.1% year to year drop. At the same time, Huawei is in the third position with 13.1%, and showed the biggest growth, at 73.4%. Vivo demonstrated steady growth at 13%, and Apple was down 52.2%, and has merely 8.6% share.

Oppo’s figures don’t cover smartphones manufactured under the Realme brand, but Huawei’s numbers include Honor devices’ stats. A3, F7 an F9 accounted for 2/3 of Oppo shipmens, since for the last five years the device manufacturer invested heavily in local promotion and services. The company has yet to engage the users from the premium segment and lure them away from Samsung and Apple.