小米“老对手”败退：卖出3亿台 拿不下中国1%市场

This article covers the event of OPPO’s sub-brand realme exiting China’s smartphone market and its broader industry context, with key takeaways summarized below:

1. Core event: realme has officially announced it will suspend new product releases in the Chinese market, with sales and after-sales services taken over by OPPO. The brand will redirect its resources to focus on expanding overseas markets. To date, realme has sold over 300 million units globally, but its market share in China has fallen below 1%.

2. Core reasons for realme’s retreat: The average smartphone replacement cycle in China has extended to nearly 3.5 years, turning mobile phones from fast-moving consumer goods into durable goods. The market is now defined by cutthroat competition for existing users, with the top six brands controlling 96.4% of the market share, leaving almost no room for smaller niche players. realme positioned itself solely as a low-price, high-specification brand, resulting in unbalanced product lines, poor build quality, and failure to build broad brand recognition. It also overlapped in positioning with OnePlus, another OPPO ecosystem brand, ultimately leading to its exit from the mainstream Chinese market.

3. New industry trends: AI has emerged as a new growth driver for the smartphone industry, with all major players developing AI-powered phones and proprietary large language models. Foldable displays and in-vehicle infotainment systems have also become key areas of exploration.

This article outlines the latest landscape and consumer trends of China’s smartphone industry, distilling key lessons for brand strategy, summarized below:

1. Current industry and consumer trends: Smartphones have transitioned from fast-moving consumer goods to durable goods, with user replacement cycles extending significantly. The industry has shifted from a growing market to zero-sum competition for existing users, with extremely high concentration among top players: the six largest brands hold 96.4% of the market share, and product homogenization is severe. The rise of AI has pushed up memory chip costs and squeezed profit margins, while also opening up new growth opportunities.

2. Lessons for brand positioning: As an online value sub-brand designed to compete with Xiaomi, realme relied solely on a value proposition that failed to meet Chinese consumers’ demand for a well-rounded experience encompassing performance, imaging, and build quality. It failed to build broad brand awareness, its core user base has limited purchasing power leaving little room for sustained growth, and it suffered from internal competition due to overlapping positioning with another brand in the same corporate ecosystem, ultimately leading to its exit.

3. Actionable strategic takeaways: A multi-brand layered strategy enables shared supply chains and lower costs. When the domestic market is saturated, strategic contraction to focus on high-growth overseas markets is a viable path. AI, foldable phones and connected car systems are promising new sectors for brand布局.

This article analyzes the ongoing shift in China’s smartphone market landscape, identifies market opportunities and risks, with key insights for mobile phone sellers summarized below:

1. Risk alert for the domestic market: China’s smartphone market is now defined by intense competition for existing users, with top brands controlling the vast majority of market share, leaving minimal room for small and mid-sized brands. Only a small number of value-focused players backed by large parent brands can survive in the pure value segment, and single-minded value positioning offers limited long-term growth. Entering the niche smartphone segment in China carries extremely high risk.

2. New growth opportunities: AI has become a new growth engine for the smartphone industry. AI-powered phones, on-device large models, foldable displays, feature-specific phones, and in-vehicle infotainment systems are all new growth areas, with high consumer acceptance of these innovative products and significant untapped market potential.

3. New areas for expansion: While the domestic market is saturated, overseas markets still offer substantial room for growth. Going offshore leveraging the parent brand’s supply chain is a feasible growth path. Sellers can partner with overseas-focused brands to tap into unmet demand in international markets.

This article analyzes shifting demand and market structure in the smartphone industry, with key takeaways for handset manufacturing suppliers summarized below:

1. Shifting product and design requirements: Chinese consumers now demand well-rounded devices rather than products that prioritize just specifications, and are no longer satisfied with value-focused devices that trade build quality for raw performance. They expect balanced performance across specs, imaging, and build quality, so manufacturers need to adapt their production capabilities to support this demand for all-around balanced product design.

2. Actionable business opportunities: As market share continues to concentrate among top brands, the share of orders from leading brands will keep rising. Factories can deepen partnerships and tie their business more closely to top brands. At the same time, the rapid growth of new segments including AI phones, foldable devices and in-vehicle smart hardware will generate substantial new production demand, so manufacturers can prepare in advance to adapt to new production requirements.

3. Insights for digitalization and supply chain management: The model of shared production facilities, shared supply chains and centralized purchasing across multiple brands can effectively reduce production costs and capture economies of scale. Factories can advance digitally integrated production to accommodate the demand for multi-brand, multi-category manufacturing and improve operational efficiency.

This article outlines development trends and core pain points in the smartphone industry, with key takeaways for smartphone-related service providers summarized below:

1. Industry development trends: The smartphone industry has transitioned from a growing market to zero-sum competition for existing users, with market share highly concentrated among top brands. AI is set to become the core growth driver for the industry, with AI-powered devices, on-device large models, in-vehicle intelligence and foldable phones widely recognized as the main areas of industry exploration.

2. Core pain points for industry clients: Key challenges for smartphone brands include limited growth headroom in a saturated market, surging memory chip costs driven by AI development that squeeze profit margins, internal friction from overlapping positioning in multi-brand portfolios, the difficulty niche brands face building broad awareness to achieve sustained growth, and the extremely low probability of small and mid-sized brands turning a profit in China’s market.

3. Actionable solution directions: Service providers can offer localized marketing and channel development support for small and mid-sized brands expanding overseas. They can provide supporting software and hardware technical services for brands developing AI phones, and offer supply chain and operational support for top brands entering new segments, to capture growth opportunities from industry transformation.

This article analyzes the latest shifts in China’s smartphone market landscape, with key takeaways for mobile phone distribution channels and e-commerce platforms summarized below:

1. Core brand demands for platforms: Overseas-focused brands require platforms to provide localized e-commerce channels and traffic support overseas. Online value brands rely heavily on platform traffic exposure to reach their target users. Brands launching innovative AI products need dedicated traffic support from platforms to connect with consumers interested in new offerings.

2. Directions for platform merchant recruitment and operations: Platforms can prioritize recruiting top brands’ innovative products such as AI phones and foldable handsets, while partnering with overseas-focused brands to support their cross-border business and unlock new growth. For operations, platforms can create dedicated traffic zones for innovative products to help brands reach their target users more effectively.

3. Risk mitigation directions: Small and niche brands carry high survival risk, so platforms should evaluate brands’ background and financial strength during recruitment to avoid post-exit issues such as unhandled after-sales requests and excess inventory. In a saturated market, platforms should prioritize serving top brands, align with their new segment expansion strategies, and stabilize their core business.

This paper documents the latest structural shifts in China’s smartphone industry, outlines new industry trends and emerging challenges, with key insights for industry researchers summarized below:

1. New industry development trends: China’s smartphone industry has now fully entered a phase of competition for existing users. The average replacement cycle has extended to nearly 3.5 years, the concentration ratio among top brands has reached 96.4%, and niche brands are progressively exiting the market. AI has become the new core growth track, with multiple leading players already developing proprietary on-device large models and AI-powered phones, while in-vehicle intelligence and foldable displays have also become key directions for brand transformation.

2. New emerging industry challenges: Multi-brand strategies often lead to overlapping positioning for sub-brands, triggering internal competition within the same corporate group. Pure value-positioned brands struggle to break through growth bottlenecks and build broad awareness in China’s hyper-competitive market. AI development has driven up memory chip costs, squeezing profit margins across the entire industry. All of these are new challenges the industry must address.

3. Business models and strategies worth further study: The multi-brand layered positioning strategy used by large parent brands, which cuts costs via shared supply chains, and the strategic choice of niche brands to shrink domestic operations and concentrate resources on deepening overseas expansion amid domestic market saturation, are both new business models and strategic paths that merit further in-depth research.