Chinese smartphone brands gained higher consumer loyalty in their domestic market last year at the expense of international vendors, including Apple Inc and HTC Corp (宏達電), Taipei-based research firm TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report on Monday.
Although Apple still had greater brand loyalty than its Chinese competitors last year, the iPhone maker saw a decline in its brand loyalty in China, the report said.
Xiaomi Corp (小米) and Huawei Technologies Co (華為) experienced growth of 1 and 6 percentage points respectively in their brand loyalty, TrendForce statistics showed.
Lenovo Group Ltd (聯想), the Chinese company, which completed a US$2.9 billion takeover of Google Inc’s Motorola handset division in October last year, also gained 6 percentage points in brand loyalty.
However, Apple’s brand loyalty among Chinese consumers fell 2 percentage points last year compared with 2013, while Taiwan-based HTC declined by 3 percentage points and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co dropped by 5 percentage points, the report said.
Shipments of Chinese brand smartphones reached a new high last year of 453 million units, translating to an annual growth rate of 54.8 percent and accounting for nearly 40 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments, the report said.
However, TrendForce smartphone analyst Henry Chung (鐘泓田) said that Chinese brands are looking at rising inventory levels and weaker sales in their home market, given that local telecom companies began cutting subsidies for smartphones in the second half of last year.
That could affect the willingness of Chinese consumers currently using 2G handsets to upgrade to 3G models or those using 3G handsets to replace them with 4G models.
As a result, TrendForce predicted that Chinese brand smartphone shipments this year could reach 531 million units, which would represent an annual growth of just 17.2 percent.
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