By Xie Fang
The Guangdong-based smartphone maker, Oppo, released its upscale flagship brand, Find X, at a press conference held in Louvre, France, Tuesday evening, marking its entry into the European market, the Securities Times reported on Thursday.
By setting the price of Find X at €999, the company hopes that the brand effect of Find X can boost the sales of its line of products.
According to Wu Qiang, vice president of Oppo, the company decided to actively exploit overseas markets at a time when it sees a slight drop in its share of the domestic market.
“Oppo has so far no presence in the European market, which is very appealing to us,” said Wu.
In fact, Oppo is only the latest Chinese smartphone brand making a foray into the European market. Ahead of Oppo, two other Chinese smartphone makers, Huawei and Xiaomi have already grabbed their own market shares in Europe.
Data from the Statista, a U.S.-based commercial data provider, shows that the market share of Huawei in Europe has risen from merely 2 percent to 13 percent from 2015 through 2017, ranking third behind Apple and Samsung, the combined market share of which has reached nearly 50 percent.
What’s more, the company saw a year-on-year increase of 38.6 percent in its sales in Europe during the first quarter of the year, pushing its market share up to 16.1 percent.
The much-hyped smartphone unicorn, Xiaomi, also saw a rapid business expansion in Europe, with its market share rising from virtually zero in 2017 to 5.3 percent. Leijun, founder and CEO of Xiaomi, admitted that Xiaomi’s robust growth in Europe was unexpected.
The size of the European market is what propels these Chinese smartphone makers to enter the market. Data from the world-leading technology market analyst firm, Canalys, shows that roughly 45.92 million smartphones were sold in Europe during the first quarter of 2018, a number which is nearly half of that in China.
