Smartphone Maker Realme is Taking India and Other Emerging Markets by Storm

An anonymous reader shares a report: As Xiaomi widens its smartphone lead over Samsung in India, a new competitor is increasingly posing a challenge. Realme, a one-and-half-year-old smartphone vendor that spun out of Oppo, commanded 14.3% of the world's second largest smartphone market in the quarter that ended in September, research firm IDC said on Monday. While Xiaomi, with 27.1% of the local smartphone market share, still dominates the market, the volume of handsets that Realme has shipped in India rose at a staggering 401.3% since the same period last year, according to IDC. What's fascinating about Realme's expansion in India is just how closely it is replicating Xiaomi's playbook in the country. Like Xiaomi, Realme for a year sold phones only through an online channel to cut overhead costs. Last quarter, the company began selling phones in India through offline stores, which still account for more than two-thirds of all smartphone sales.

[...] Realme has launched more than a dozen aggressively priced smartphone models so far, all priced between $80 to $240 -- the sweet spot in the local market. In fact, IDC says Realme's C2, 3i and 3 models -- priced between $80 and $110 -- were the top-selling phones for the company in Q3 this year. Realme today operates in 18 countries, including its home market China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam and Egypt. In May this year, the company entered the European region. In a report Counterpoint shared with its clients recently, the research firm said that based on the number of smartphones that Realme has shipped, the company's rank went from 47th in Q3 2018 to 7th as of September this year. By shipping more than 10 million smartphones, the Chinese firm's shipment grew by a whopping 808% during this period, the research firm said.