Home Tech News Cherry Mobile Top Smartphone Vendor; PH 3rd Largest Smartphone Market In SEA

Cherry Mobile Top Smartphone Vendor; PH 3rd Largest Smartphone Market In SEA

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Philippines is now the 3rd largest smartphone market in Southeast Asia, pulling ahead of Vietnam as per announced by the International Data Corporation (IDC) on its recently published quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker for the Asia / Pacific region.

“Catching up on the smartphone craze, the Philippines is now the third largest market for smartphones in Southeast Asia, coming after Indonesia and Thailand,” said Jerome Dominguez, Market Analyst at IDC Philippines.

According to the report, a total of 26.8 million mobile phones were shipped to the Philippines in 2014 with the share of smartphones increasing from 24% in 2013 to 47% in 2014.

The offshoot in the increase of sale is due to price drop of smartphones as component prices drop and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are able to produce cheaper smartphones. Actually, the 58% of smartphone shipments to country last year was due to the sub-PHP4,000 smartphone models offered to consumers.

The Philippines is also the fourth country in Southeast Asia to ship more smartphones than feature phones, after Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

“The narrowing price gap between smartphones and feature phones made smartphones more palatable to budget-conscious Filipino consumers, leading to the faster adoption of smartphones in 2014 compared to previous years,” added Dominguez.

Cherry Mobile Top Smartphone Vendor

Along with this report is the news that Cherry Mobile was named as the top smartphone vendor of 2014 in the country, leaving Samsung on the 2nd place. Two more local smartphone vendors made it to the top 5 (in unit shipment terms in 2014) with MyPhone on the 3rd rank and Torque on the 5th.

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Daniel Pang, Senior Research Manager of the Client Devices group at IDC Asia/Pacific comments, “The success of local smartphone players is an offshoot of heavy marketing, celebrity endorsements, and price-competitive offerings. Branding is critical in the Philippines., The thriving local vendors are those that not only offer budget-friendly smartphones, but also produce strong ATL campaigns and are endorsed by popular celebrities.”

Local vendors managed to gain market despite the perception of global competitors like Chinese vendors and giant companies like Samsung and Apple inside the country.

Chinese giant Lenovo is on the 4th spot in the top 5, while newly branched out products like Oppo and Xiaomi have yet to gain ground in the country given limited brand awareness.

Samsung is still on the lead on the pack of global vendors, followed by LG Electronics.

IDC is expecting for smartphone prices to continue to go down as vendors further push the price limits for smartphones to the sub-PHP2, 000 price level.

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