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Comment by tanilama | Hacker News Reader

Because most major manufacturers are mainly Chinese now(Huawei/Xiaomi/Oppo), and China is the NO1 market, why leave China?

Samsung had been irrelevant in China for some years now, like below 1% market share. It just can't compete

US is by far the only market that Chinese phones haven't dominated, but that is for a reason. Buying an Android in US there has surprising limited choices, Samsung/OnePlus/Pixel in that Order, and that is it. It is Duoploy either Samsung or iPhone, and others don't play.

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Right. The US only. Well, also Japan. Also, Korea. I guess also much of Europe too. Or Canada. But, yeah other than that. Which I guess is really just India and China. So I guess the reason is median/mean income??

To be fair India and China makes up almost 40% of the world population.

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share...

Adding Huawei+Xiaomi+Oppo+Vivo alone counts 45% of the world smart share already, by units, and the others consisting ZTE/Lenovo and other Chinese brands as well. Safe to say the Chinese phones are already 50% of all phones shipped.

Yes, it is pretty dominating. Had not for the Trump ban, Huawei would probably dethrone Samsung in EU as well, according to analysis in Feb

https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/14/18224614/huawei-chinese-p...

As a gadget enthusiasts, though overall the phone innovation is slowing down, but at least Chinese brands are the fewer left there to churn out marketable features, like those monstrous cameras and tricks to hide it. Apple and Samsung are just being lazy there, with incremental upgrade which command a premium

You said "US is by far the only market that Chinese phones haven't dominated"

So Chinese phone manufacturers making up 1/3 of the European market, as per your link, is them dominating it??? Chinese phones don't dominate worldwide in the sense of geography. They dominate worldwide in the sense of units because they are the low margin, budget phone manufacturers supplying lower income parts of the world. Not a bad place to be, but doesn't remotely support your assertion above that the US is the only market they don't dominate. That's obviously wrong just from your own sources.

While you're partially right, I wouldn't look at the smartphone sales trends if I were you... Chinese phones were at something like 1% 5 years ago and now they're at 45%. There's also not much sign of them slowing down.

Samsung was basically saved from being overtaken by Huawei as #1 by Trump's ban.

The higher end Huawei devices were nearly as good, but significantly lower priced, or better for similar pricing. Was actually considering a Matebook as a future laptop purchase in a year or so.

>So Chinese phone manufacturers making up 1/3 of the European market, as per your link, is them dominating it???

Considering that a lot or most of the iPhones and Samsung phones sold (well, before the moving out) were also made in China, yes. The 1/3 you mention are just the Chinese brands....

Apple iPhone, yes, they are made in China; most Samsung phones were made in Vietnam by 2017 and on. So no.

I assume this has to do with carriers. Most people buy their phones from carriers in Canadia, US and Japan. What carriers subsidize dictates the market. In other markets like India where most customers use prepaid plans they get their phones directly from phone manufacturer.

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