Digital Review: How did realme rank among the top 5 in China’s 5G smartphone shipments?

Well-known research organization IDC recently released a report on China's 5G mobile phone shipments in the third quarter, showing that 5G mobile phone shipments in the quarter were about 49.7 million units. Among them, Huawei still ranks first, OPPO and vivo continue to rank second and third, and Xiaomi ranks fourth. Surprisingly, the fifth-ranked mobile phone manufacturer is not the international giant Samsung, but the relatively "niche" realme.

Public data shows that Realme was founded in May 2018. At that time, it was launched as a new sub-brand of OPPO in the Indian market, focusing on the thousand-yuan mobile phone and online market. It began to operate independently in July of the same year. In the fourth quarter of 2018, Realme officially became the fourth largest mobile phone manufacturer in India. In the third quarter of 2020, Counterpoint data showed that Realme's shipments have been ranked seventh in the world for several consecutive quarters.

It is worth mentioning that realme only announced its official entry into the domestic market in April 2019. In less than two years, realme has surpassed Samsung, Meizu and other established mobile phone manufacturers in terms of 5G mobile phone shipments, and has entered the top five. Its strength should not be underestimated. Then ordinary consumers can't help but ask, how did realme do it? This is what this issue of Digital Discussion will discuss. In my opinion, realme has achieved the following points:

1. Firmly implement the full-series 5G strategy: If you want to increase the shipment of 5G mobile phones, you must first have enough 5G products. As far as I can remember, Realme is the first mobile phone manufacturer to call out the full-series 5G strategy.

On December 2, 2019, realme CEO Li Bingzhong posted on Weibo that in the domestic market in 2020, realme will have a full range of 5G mobile phones - completing 5G model coverage in all price ranges from entry-level phones of thousands of yuan to high-end flagships, and actively participate in the promotion of 5G as a "popularizer."

Image source: Weibo

Judging from realme's current performance, it is basically firmly implementing its full 5G strategy in the domestic market. The first 5G mobile phone in China priced below 1,000 yuan is from realme.

2. Entering the online and offline markets at the same time: It is not enough to have 5G products, consumers must also be able to buy them. Although realme has entered the domestic market for less than two years, it has far more sales channels than ordinary mobile phone manufacturers.

In April 2020, Realme Vice President Xu Qi announced that Realme had reached a strategic cooperation with Chinese retailer Suning.com and entered its offline stores in China. Since then, Liu Zuohu has become Oukitel's Chief Product Experience Officer. After some efforts, he not only expanded the online sales channels of Realme products from e-commerce platforms such as JD.com, Tmall, and Suning to HuanTian Mall, but also made up for Realme's shortcomings in after-sales service.

According to official disclosures in August, realme adopts online retail + offline entity cross-channel integration, not only covering more e-commerce platforms, but also covering more than 300 prefecture-level city store channels across the country. Currently, there are 11 mail-in repair outlets and more than 900 offline service outlets in China, covering 293 cities. In addition, realme has authorized some OPPO offline outlets as realme after-sales service points to make up for realme's previous offline after-sales service gaps.

Image source: Weibo

3. Adjust product lines in a timely manner: As we all know, the product line of mobile phone manufacturers is very important. If it is not done well, it will either cause products to snatch users from each other, which is "involution" or "internal consumption", or it will make consumers confused and at a loss when choosing products.

After experiencing confusion in the first half of the year due to unclear product lines (many versions of the realme X50 series alone were derived), realme adjusted its product lines in the second half of the year. The official returned the core naming of the products to the series + unit number method, which is also to better represent the positioning and concept of each series.

Image source: Weibo

At present, it is known that realme divides its product line into four series, among which the Q series, V series, and X series have already launched many products. As for the new series representing extreme performance, it is rumored that it will replace OPPO's Ace series, which makes many consumers full of expectations for it. 

Of course, there is also an external reason why realme can rank among the top 5 in China's 5G mobile phone shipments. Except for Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi, their 5G products are either too expensive or cover too few price ranges. In other words, the overall competitiveness of their products is not as good as realme.

In any case, I hope that realme can continue to work hard and provide more excellent 5G products to domestic consumers, and it would be best if it can break the top four pattern of Huawei, OPPO, vivo, and Xiaomi.