In crisis, Samsung is stalked by a crouching tiger and a hidden dragon

Samsung’s booth at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, earlier this year. Photo credit: Steven Millward.

Samsung accounts for 17 percent of South Korea’s GDP and is the world’s biggest smartphone maker, so its exploding phone crisis with the now discontinued Galaxy Note 7 is no trifling matter.

And although the Note 7 is just one of a dizzying array of phone models that Samsung pushes, it’s the firm’s flagship – the biggest and the boldest expression of Samsung as a gadget brand.

With the Note 7 now pulled from shelves and no replacement for the iPhone 7 Plus arch-rival in sight, Apple might enjoy a bump in sales for its largest phones. But Chinese brands, already on the ascent and with attractive price tags, look set to gain the most.

Danger zone

An embattled and weakened Samsung is now stalked by a crouching tiger and a hidden dragon.

The tiger is Huawei.

Huawei has already beaten Samsung at its own game in China. Its ambition is to build on that and go from being the world’s third biggest phone maker to the number one.

The Huawei P9 with its dual rear camera. Photo credit: Andri Koolme.

The Shenzhen-based company is already having a stellar year with its phones, hitting record sales figures. It won’t top Samsung’s huge tally this year – or Apple’s – but the well-received Huawei P9 and the upcoming refresh for the Huawei Mate 8 (presumably the Mate 9) are well placed to pick up the customers who would have bought the Galaxy Note 7.

The dragon? That’s Oppo.

It’s a brand not many people have heard of until recently, but it has flown at a surprising pace into the global phone market. Oppo is now the fourth biggest in the global smartphone arena.

Oppo promotes the selfie savvy of its R9 phone at an event in Indonesia. Photo credit: Didi Putra.

Like Huawei, Oppo is seeing massive growth not just in China but in younger markets where there are lots of new switchers from flip phones to smartphones – like India, Southeast Asia, and across Latin America. Oppo’s sister brands, Vivo and OnePlus, are on the rise as well.

They’re all well-positioned to benefit from the absence of the Note 7 with their premium-looking large-screen phones, like the Oppo R9 Plus and the OnePlus 3.

The fast-charging Chinese firms might even attract new converts among people who see the entire Samsung mobile brand as tarnished by the crisis. If that happens, budget phone makers like Xiaomi – which has been having a rough year so far – could win new fans as well.

This is an opinion piece.

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from Tech in Asia https://www.techinasia.com/samsung-exploding-phone-crisis-benefits-chinese-phone-makers
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