2019 was an important year for the smartphone market in India. Counterpoint Research reports that the Indian smartphone market has officially overtaken the U.S. as the world’s second-largest market in terms of annual shipments. The growth was driven by the mid-tier segment in the region from Chinese brands like Xiaomi, Vivo, and Realme. Notably, India is already the second-largest market in the world in terms of the total handset install base but this is a new milestone for the growing market.

Q4 2019 also saw some changes in the positioning of brands in terms of market share in India. While Xiaomi retained a 27% market share in the final quarter of 2019, Vivo made a significant jump in the same period, overtaking Samsung as the second-largest smartphone maker in the region. Vivo’s market share grew from a mere 10% in 2018 to an incredible 21% in Q4 2019. On the other hand, Samsung’s market share dipped to 19% in the same period.

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Vivo’s incredible growth was reportedly driven by the new ‘U‘ and ‘Z‘ models in India. The brand has renewed its focus on e-commerce platforms and offers fat commissions to offline retailers to promote its models, with a special focus on lower-tier cities.

Samsung’s declining market share has further helped Vivo rise to second place in the Indian market. In fact, Samsung’s market share in India was at its lowest (19%) in the final quarter of 2019 since 2016.

Realme’s market share dipped quite significantly in the last quarter of 2019. It fell from 16% in Q3 2019 to 8% in Q4 2019. This also allowed OPPO to overtake the brand to become the fourth-largest smartphone maker in the final quarter of the year. OPPO’s market share increased from 8% in Q3 2019 to 12% in Q4 2019 as it shipped nearly 2x smartphones in the last quarter vs the previous one.

In terms of overall market share in 2019, Xiaomi and Samsung retained their first and second places respectively, just like in 2018. Vivo made significant progress in 2019 increasing its overall market share from just 10% in 2018 to a solid 16% in 2019. But Realme was the fastest-growing smartphone brand in India in 2019 registering a staggering 255% growth. Realme’s market share increased to 10% in 2019 as compared to just 3% in 2019. OPPO’s growth in 2019 was relatively slow but it still managed to increase its shipments by 28% last year.

We can also see a change in the dynamics of the Indian smartphone market. In 2019, smartphone shipments were concentrated among the top five brands in India than ever before. The top 5 smartphone makers took a staggering 84% share of the market last year, a significant jump from 2018’s 73%. This means that the top five brands in India are increasingly strengthening their foothold in the market while other brands like Motorola and Huawei are losing their ground.

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(Source)

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According to the new financial report, Samsung Electronics‘ saw the fall of its operating profits by 33 percent (or one-third) in the fourth quarter of 2019. The South Korean tech giant is the world’s largest smartphone and memory chips manufacturer and faced declining profits in both categories.

In contrast to 2018, Samsung suffered from a number of obstacles once the chip market declined in 2019 after the initial surge. Furthermore, the premium segment of smartphones has increasingly become an intensely competitive segment. However, the numbers aren’t all that bleak as the company has exceeded expectations, according to analysts.

The financial figures apparently beat expectations as chip demand saw improvement, with healthy smartphone sales. This could also lead up to the new year, 2020, and the fresh upcoming lineup. In 2019, the other three quarters of the year also saw a sizeable net loss of profits; about half of what had been accrued in the same respective quarters in 2018.

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As seen on the financial statement, Samsung Electronics projected operating profits in the period between October to December 2019 at 7.1 trillion won (or roughly 6.1 billion). The numbers amount to a 34.2 percent fall in profits in comparison to the previous year.

For 2020, analysts speculate that Samsung will perform noticeably better than the previous year. This will be supplemented by the fact that DRAM and NAND memory markets are predicted to rise in demand and in price this year. Additionally, Samsung is also hoping for 5G network availability to pick up globally, allowing for higher sales of its 5G handset offerings.

Notably, Samsung Electronics as a brand is integral to the economic health of the South Korean economy. It is a subsidiary and flagship department of the Samsung Group which also generates a major chunk of the multinational corporation’s total revenue.

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Earlier, Huawei’s HongMeng OS was reported to be the replacement of Android for the company. However, since last month, the company changed the tunes and is now claiming that HongMeng was never meant to be the Android replacement and is for enterprise clients working on connected devices.

However, the reports are claiming the contradictory. A new report coming from China claims that Huawei is currently testing a new smartphone which is powered by the company’s own HongMeng OS. It further adds that the phone could get launched in Q4 2019 for a price of around 2,000 yuan, which roughly converts to $288.

The mid-range smartphone running HongMeng OS will be launched in order to attract software developers to join the company’s new ecosystem, claims the report. It adds that the system also has cryptographic functions that protect personal data and prevents users’ privacy from being breached. The phone is expected to get announced along with the upcoming Mate 30 series smartphones from Huawei.

The HongMeng OS will be launched by Huawei at its Developer Conference on 9th August in Dongguan, South China’s Guangdong Province. The Huawei HongMeng OS will also be powering the Honor Smart TV products which are expected to be available in the market from 10th August. Later, the operating system will be expanded to be available for a variety of fields, including autonomous driving, remote medical services, and industrial control.

When the United States put Huawei on the “Entity List”, effectively banning the Chinese giant from doing business or procuring technology from US-based firms, Google cut-off its business ties with the company. This meant that Huawei was no longer able to get the license to the Android operating system and then the company confirmed that it had been working on its own mobile operating system.

As per the reports, the HongMeng OS is based on open-source Android is compatible with Android apps. Also, during the test run, the operating system turned out to be 60 percent faster than Android.

Later, when the US announced that the US-based companies can keep doing business with Huawei as long as it doesn’t threaten national security, Huawei executive said that the HongMong OS is meant to IoT and industrial use. But it seems that the claim is not true and Huawei is working on a backup OS just in case these things don’t go in its favor.

(Source)

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