Leading smartphone brands have tightened their grip of urban China market. In the three months ending October 2017, the top five brands – Huawei (including sub-brand Honor), Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo and OPPO – made up 91% of smartphone sales in urban China, compared to 79% a year earlier, according to the latest smartphone OS data from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.

China, a market once overrun with new challengers, is maturing.

“Chinese challenger brands like Meizu, LeTV, Coolpad, ZTE, and Lenovo were once on the same trajectory as like of Xiaomi, but any momentum they once had has abruptly stopped, with many struggling to get past a 1% share,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Business Unit Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “Samsung’s performance in China continues to deteriorate, with its share now down to just 2.2% of that market.”

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech carries out monthly panel surveys among Chinese urban mobile phone users to monitor the market share changes of various brands. In China, the panel size is 22,000. Panellists were recruited from tier-1 to 5 cities and each year more than 260,000 surveys were conducted. The nature of the research methodology means it can cover the influence of smartphones sold in other countries ended up in China and avoid the confusion caused by unsold phones stocked at warehouses of distributors.

Digging deeper into the data, we can see that Xiaomi and Honor both realized significant growth in August – October period. Xiaomi’s sales market share jumped to 20.1%, 1 percentage point higher than in the May – July circle. However, due to its previously lacklustre performance, currently only 13.8% of all urban smartphone users are using Xiaomi, 2.1 percentage points lower than a year ago.

Honor’s share was 11.7% in August – October, also 1 percentage point higher than in May – July circle. Among all urban smartphone users, 9.8% are using Honor, 1.3 percentage points higher than a year ago.

Among the top 20 best-selling models during August – October period, eight are from Xiaomi or Honor.

Even though “price” is the biggest advantage of both brands when people making their purchasing decision, Xiaomi and Honor have both managed to achieve higher selling prices. Between August and October, the average selling price of Xiaomi models is 1,640.32 yuan, 321.96 yuan higher than a year ago; that of Honor phones is 2,136.66 yuan, 506.53 yuan higher than a year ago.

It’s a bittersweet period for Apple. Urban China remained a bright spot for Apple, with its share edging up 0.5 percentage point in the latest three months to reach 17.4%.

But globally, iOS share fell in key markets, making clear the impact of the flagship iPhone X not being available to buy in the month of October.

Dominic said: “It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform.

“Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them,” he said.

He added: “As of October 2017, 35.3% of Apple’s installed base customers across Europe and the United States had owned their iPhones for more than two years – up from 30.1% a year earlier and signifying considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base. In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models.”

China smartphone market in Q3 2017; 4 out of 10 using Huawei or iPhone

The total sales of smartphones in China reached 35.52 million units in April 2017, led by Huawei with 8.08 million units and 22.8% market share.

The top 10 smartphone brands also include OPPO, Vivo, Apple, Xiaomi, Meizu, Gionee, Samsung, Letv, and Lephone. The top three accounted for over 50% market share in April.

Apple’s market share increased by 0.7% compared with March 2017 to 11.6% in April 2017, ranking the fourth. And, Samsung fell out of the top five in China.

In the “3500-5000 yuan” high-end smartphone market, Huawei’s sales accounted for almost 90% in April 2017 according to a Chinese mobile phone retailer Dixintong.

China smartphone market insights for Q1 2017

iQiyi ranks on top in China’s mobile video category with 245.61 million active users in Feb 2017, followed by Tencent Video, Youku, Letv, and Mango TV.

Sohu TV, Baofeng, PPTV, Tudou, and Migu Video apps are also in the top 10 video apps by MAUs in Feb 2017. Bilibili Cartoon ranks first in the vertical digital video mobile apps category with 30.52 million active users, followed by Hanju TV (Korean drama), Migu Movie, AcFun, Renren Movie, 1905 Movie, etc.

CCTV mobile app is the top one in TV programs category, followed by Migu, Mobile TV, and Yuntu TV.

In the short videos category, Kuaishou mobile app ranks on top in China in Feb 2017 with over 86 million active users, followed by Meipai, Xiaokaxiu, Miaopai, and Doupai.

Douyu, Huya, Inke, YY Live, and Huajiao are the top 5 digital video broadcasting mobile apps by MAU in Feb 2017.

Case Studies: Native Video Ads on WeChat Moments

According to Weibo’s daily influence index, Tmall, OKHQB, and Dangdang performed best on Weibo among 1,613 active Weibo accounts in B2C e-commerce category in 2014.

Also read: Travel Industry Performance on Weibo 2014

In July 2014, iQiYi, owned by Baidu, ranked top among China online video providers with monthly browsing time of 786.45 million hours, followed by Youku and Letv according to data from iResearch.

In July, total number of iQiyi’s users on mobile device increased by 9.57% from June in 2014. It is estimated that the number of iQIYI’s total users will likely double by the end of 2014. In August, with monthly browsing time of 775.515 million hours, Youku ranked top among China online video providers, followed by IQiYi and Letv.

Besides iQiYi’s good performance in July and August 2014, Letv is also running on a good track as it is still in top 3 list by monthly browsing time whose CEO was awarded the Best CEO among China’s public listed companies in 2014 on Forbes.

Youku Tudou’s loss continued and Youku Tudou reached Over 500M Users in Q2 2014.

Also read: Top Mobile Video Providers in China in July 2014

Forbes China studies the revenues of China’s public listed companies for three consecutive years and came up with a “China’s Best CEO” list today.

The average salary of Forbes’ this year’s best ceo is about RMB 1.89 million, less than a third of last year’s because some of the top paid CEOs such as Tencent’s Pony Ma didn’t make it to this year’s Best CEO list.

Highlights of Forbes Best CEO 2014

• The Best CEO among China’s public listed companies is Jia Yueting, the chairman of Leshi Television (LeTV.com, China’s online video portal)
• The second best: Liu Chengyan, chairman and CEO of ChinaNetCenter (China’s CDN and data center provider)
• The third best: Tang Hui, general manager of BY-Health, a China-based comapny principally engaged in the research, development, production and distribution of nutrition supplements
• The average salary is less than a third of last year’s
• No one is from real estate industry

View the translated list here.

According to the data from comScore, Letv’s number of unique viewers in February is about 100 million, making it the third largets video network behind Youku and Tencent.

In March 2013, Youku, Tencent and LETV remained the top three video networks. LETV, many people outside China may not be familiar with, is a public listed company on Shenzhen Stock Exchange, focusing on wide variety of drama series and movies.