Chinese phone makers chase Koreans rapidly

By Choi Sung-jin

Three Chinese smartphone makers took third, fourth and fifth places in global market share in the third quarter, overtaking Apple in combined share and threatening even Samsung, industry sources said. 

According to Gartner, a Connecticut-based IT research and advisory group, the three Chinese makers _ Huawei, Lenovo and Shaomi _ sold 61.88 million smartphones in the July-September quarter, exceeding the 46.06 million sold by Apple. Their combined market share of 17.5 percent was also larger than Apple's 13.1 percent. 

There still remains a gap with Samsung, which sold 83.58 million and took market share of 23.7 percent. The problem is, market watchers here say, market share. Samsung's share edged down 0.2 percentage point year-on in the three-month period, while that of Apple's rose by 0.6 percentage point. Huawei, which has pushed LG aside to consolidate third place in units sold, saw its share jump from 5.2 percent to 7.7 percent. 

Huawei has also successfully shaken off its image as a low-cost phone maker. "We sold more than half of our total production in overseas markets," said a Huawei Korea official. "Our sales in Southeast Asia and Africa soared 164 percent in the third quarter." The Chinese maker is also doing well in high-end European markets. In Spain and Italy, it carved out shares of 45.7 percent and 27.9 percent, respectively, of their expensive smartphone markets priced at 500 euros (600,000 won) or more per unit. 

Samsung is closely watching Huaway's gains in high-end markets. "We are paying attention to the fact that more and more of the Chinese maker's products are overlapping with ours," a Samsung official said. 

According to Gartner, meanwhile, global Smartphone sales totaled 3.52 billion units in the third-quarter, up 15.5 percent from a year ago, which an analyst attributed to increased demand in emerging countries.