Chinese tech conglomerate, Alibaba is known locally and globally for its e-commerce online trading platforms which have enabled a more globalised economy in the 2010s and 2020s. Recently, Alibaba-owned Southeast Asian online shopping platform, Lazada, has gone through a management reshuffle and has appointed a new CEO for the Lazada company.

As of Jun 3rd, the new chief executive officer for Lazada in the Southeast Asian region is Mr James Dong, replacing former CEO, Chun Li. 

Dong was a former associate partner at McKinsey & Co and a proud MBA graduate from Cambridge University. He had served as the head of globalization strategy and corporate development at Alibaba Group and as a business assistant to group CEO Zhang before joining Lazada as its CEO for Thailand in 2018.

In 2019, Dong was then appointed for CEO for Lazada Vietnam as well while still holding the position of CEO for Lazada Thailand. During his term as CEO, he oversaw a push to bolster logistics and improve operations to cope with rising orders at the height of the pandemic. Between June and August of 2021, at the peak of the fourth wave of Covid-19 in Vietnam, Lazada’s orders in the country quadrupled from a year earlier, Bloomberg reported, quoting Dong.

“Since James joined Lazada in 2018, he has quickly delivered success in his various roles,” the company said in its statement.

Dong has since passed on the Vietnam top role to Kaya Qin and had continued on as CEO for Thailand, where he led the launch of a new social commerce platform.

Chun Li, the former CEO of Lazada for the entire Southeast Asian market since 2020, has now been delegated a new role as advisor to Lazada Group Chairman Jiang Fan and stay on the company’s board, according to a company statement.

The Lazada brand has recently been facing fierce competition in the Southeast Asian market with rapidly growing e-commerce sites in the region such as Shopee and JD. Despite these growing concerns, the Lazada brand is reportedly looking for expansion into the European market as well to continue growing its business operations.

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(Via 1, Via 2)

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Oppo has recently toppled Samsung as the leading smartphone manufacturer in the Southeast Asian market for the second quarter of this year. The Chinese tech giant saw great success thanks to its broad arsenal of budget handsets.

According to a Counterpoint Research report, Oppo topped the list with the highest market share for a smartphone manufacturer, coming in at 20.3 percent. The South Korean tech giant arrived a close second with a total market share of 19.5 percent. Similarly, other Chinese vendors took four of the top five spots in the list. This includes Vivo that came in third with a market share of 17.9 percent, followed by Xiaomi with 14 percent and Realme with a market share of 12.8 percent.

Editor’s Pick: Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro could be coming to India with around Rs. 35,000 (~$476) pricing

This is not the first time Samsung has lost to Oppo in the Southeast Asian market, with the last quarter of 2019 also showing similar results. Although, the former had managed to reclaim its title in the first quarter of 2020, but only by a marginal lead of 0.2 percent over Oppo. The primary factor that helped the Chinese OEM achieve this was the Coronavirus pandemic, which led people to spend less on nonessential goods and go for budget smartphones, something Oppo had taken great advantage of.

Notably, the Southeast Asian market has declined by 22 percent year on year, dropping to 24 million units being shipped in the second quarter of 2020. This was to be expected considering this time period suffered the brunt of the viral outbreak and the various lockdowns which were common across many nations around the globe. Despite defeating the South Korean company in Q2, it remains to be seen how the market shifts in the second half of this year. So stay tuned.

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Chinese smartphone brands have been gaining a significant amount of market share globally, thanks to the growth of China-based smartphone manufacturers in the Southeast Asian markets.

For instance, the popularity of Chinese brands has been rising in Vietnam since the past couple of years, marking a major change from the past dominance of brands such as Samsung and Apple.

China-based smartphone brands have grabbed more than two-third of the market share in two of the world’s largest smartphone markets — China and India. Now, the three leading brands — Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo have turned to the Southeast Asia market.

Combined, they garnered 62 percent of the region’s 30.7 million total handset shipments in the second quarter, up from 50 percent in the same quarter last year, according to a note this month from industry research agency Canalys.

South Korean giant Samsung still remains the leader in the market with a growth of 5 percent in the region. Chinese brands Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi have secured second, third, and fourth position respectively. During this time, Oppo posted its biggest-ever growth of 49 percent in the three-month period.

Realme, the company backed by Oppo, has seen tremendous growth in the Indian market and recently entered Southeast Asia for the first time with a shipment of 1.6 million smartphones and 5.2 percent market share.

The deep-pocketed Chinese brands have adopted the strategy of aggressive marketing tactics and offering innovative handsets at an attractive price point. The companies are hiring local celebrities to aggressively market their devices. And this strategy is proving to be successful.

Even though there are concerns about Huawei, the leading Chinese smartphone company related to the security issues and the company’s close proximity to the Chinese government, it has not impacted other brands.

Western countries have concerns over Chinese smartphone companies and thus not many brands are present in that region but the same is not the case in Southeast Asia. The popularity of Chinese brands keeps rising even though their leading brand Huawei has been blacklisted by the United States.

(Source)

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Not long after it received FCC approval, the OPPO R1001 was quietly released in Indonesia for Rp7000 (about 700 RMB or $111.95) and is considered to be OPPO’s cheapest smart phone to date.  

As a phone targeted towards the low-end market, there is not much to say about the OPPO Joy’s appearance. Its design is more common among OPPO’s entry-level products. Its measurements are 124 x 63 x 9.9mm and it is available in black and white.

It uses MTK’s MT6572/M dual-core processor with a main frequency of 1.2GHz, has 512Mb RAM and 4Gb ROM. It also has a 300,000 pixel front camera and 3mP rear camera, a 4 inch WVGA resolution screen, and a 1700mA battery. It can also support the WCDMA+GSM dual-SIM card and its operating system is based on the Android 4.2.

After entering the Southeast Asian market, the OPPO Joy may break into the Chinese market.

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