Quiz question: which smartphone brand reached the limit of 50 million smartphones delivered ? You may be thinking of Apple, Samsung, Huawei or Xiaomi, but those answers are all wrong. The correct answer is Realme.

And that answer tells a lot about how the current smartphone market works. Because although there is often the idea here that the smartphone market is reasonably closed with Samsung and Apple as the largest players and that the rest of the manufacturers are fighting for the crumbs, the picture actually looks a bit more nuanced. The gap with the competition is only small. In fact, this spring, Huawei was the market leader in the smartphone market, analysts said. The smartphone market is unlocked, but still wide open.

The figures What has changed are the growth figures. Smartphone deliveries grew wildly for years and that has come to an end. If you want to grow as a manufacturer, a competitor has to downsize. This can also be seen in the most recent figures, which were released on Thursday and Friday. Three analyst firms, IDC, Canalys and Counterpoint, gave roughly the same picture. The smartphone market is shrinking slightly and Samsung is once again the market leader. Huawei slips in as Xiaomi grows.

Unlike some other times, the analysts – who don’t publish their entire reports because they make a living selling those reports – give a glimpse of the rest of the top ten smartphone makers.

This shows an interesting picture. Samsung as a South Korean company and Apple as an American company are of course in this, but for the rest it is mainly China that is the key. We concluded a few years ago that an easterly wind is blowing in the smartphone market and it is continuing firmly.

The largest Chinese player remains Huawei, despite the US trade ban. This is mainly due to its strong position in home country China, the largest market for smartphones in the world. In other parts of the world, such as Europe, the supply of Huawei smartphones is declining considerably due to the lack of Google services.

Xiaomi has passed Apple this quarter, according to the analysts. That is a temporary situation, because the last months of the year is invariably the moment that Apple releases its new iPhones and then the American manufacturer supplies many more models.

Behind this are various Chinese manufacturers: the analysts places Vivo and Oppo there, as do OnePlus brands of the Chinese BBK. Behind it is another BBK brand. Not OnePlus – which is not in the top ten – but Realme. The Chinese brand, mainly focused on India, is rapidly entering the top ten.

Behind that, the situation is a bit more diffuse. Counterpoint has calculated that Lenovo, LG and Tecno complete the top of the smartphone market. Canalys establishes Transsion there, parent company of Tecno. What is striking: of all those brands, only LG is not Chinese. For those who are not familiar with Tecno: it focuses its models mainly on the African market.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 IDC Samsung Huawei Xiaomi Apple Vivo Counterpoint Samsung Huawei Xiaomi Apple Oppo Vivo Realme Lenovo /

Motorola LG Tecno /

Transsion Canalys Samsung Huawei Xiaomi Apple Vivo Oppo Realme Lenovo /

Motorola Tecno /

Transsion Why some brands do well One of the major problems in interpreting the figures is what you consider to be one company and what not. Analysts put Redmi phones at Xiaomi and Honor at Huawei: the brands exchange components and software with each other. In fact, what is a Redmi phone in one country could be a Mi phone in another and a Poco in the third.

BBK’s brands are broken down: Oppo, Vivo , Realme and OnePlus count separately. If you add them together, Chinese parent company Samsung is on the heels of Samsung. What also feels crazy as a European: OnePlus is by far the smallest brand of the four. There is also little growth in it: OnePlus grew 2 percent compared to last year, Counterpoint notes.

The brands function separately and, for example, create their own software and designs, but they derive from each other the important economies of scale. If Oppo, Vivo, Realme and OnePlus together knock on Qualcomm for Snapdragon socs or Samsung for OLED screens, they can place a larger order and negotiate a lower price and faster delivery. As a result, it is possible to charge a lower price for their phones than many competitors, allowing them to deliver more. That’s a circle that keeps itself going.

Example? Take the recently presented OnePlus Nord N 100, the cheapest OnePlus phone to date. That phone has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 – soc and a 6, 52 “LCD with a 20: 9 ratio and resolution of 1600 x 720 pixels, with a hole at the top left for the front camera and a refresh rate of 90 Hz.

Do you think other BBK brands also have phones with the same screen? Of course. The Oppo A 53 for example, or Oppo A 33. Or the Realme C 17. Or the Realme 7i. They are all phones with the same screen, in many cases a Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 – soc, a capacitive fingerprint scanner on the back, a rear left top camera island with three lenses, 5000 mAh- battery and charging with 18 W. The specsheets are identical in many ways tiek. The prices also: between 150 and 200 euro.

Find the differences: OnePlus Nord N 100, Oppo A 53 and Realme C 17

What does differ is the brand, the software, marketing and distribution. Because a OnePlus Nord N 100 should appeal to the OnePlus audience, people who love the speed and software of this brand. A Realme phone is more geared towards the Indian market and Realme touts the phone with texts like “the 7i is inspired by fantasy scenes in the Arctic. The blue color combines the white of the Arctic snow with the blue of the ocean. The green color glows like an Aurora and creates an idea of ​​wonder and mystery “.

This trick is not only reserved for BBK with its brands. Xiaomi is also doing it with all the different, confusing names and series in its smartphone branch, something that TechAltar tried to analyze in a video this week.

The various additions to Xiaomi’s smartphone names. Source: TechAltar Huawei has also played this game a lot, albeit a bit more transparent. Components and features were the first to come out for expensive Huawei models, such as a Mate phone. Those components returned the following year in cheaper models under the Honor brand. Examples are Kirin-socs and the gaming function GPU Turbo.

Thanks to this strategy, Chinese companies can take the great advantage of a big brand – buy many and cheap components, have enough budget for marketing and distribution – with the advantage of a small brand, namely being able to build a community because of sympathy for the underdog and targeted communication. Because, as Counterpoint has calculated, Realme is the smartphone brand that has the fastest 50 million smartphones delivered in the history of the telecom market. Of course, there is a lot to be said about those figures: the smartphone market was much smaller when Apple, Samsung and Huawei started, but it is in any case a sign that a small brand – with the support of a large parent company – can still penetrate relatively quickly. to the top of the smartphone market.