Smart phone market in Pakistan has seen steep growth in last several years. The peak was seen in 2015 when the YOY growth stood at 40%. By 2016 smart phone growth in volume saw a gradual decline and the industry experts expect that in 2017 the growth will come down to 10% to 12% YOY.

While saturation hitting the smart phone segment, the arrival of Chinese brands still continues, last few months have seen the launch of much touted Xiaomi along with smaller brands like Techno and IvTel adding with the expected arrival of Meizu and Vivo.

Keeping in view the already existed Chinses brands such as Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo and Infinix who are fighting to grab market share from major volume drivers like Samsung & QMobile. The lineup of Chinese manufacturers will strengthen up this year, which most likely will herald the way for the shift of control from globally leading brand like Samsung to a cluster of Chinese brands. If we look closely at current market share contribution from each brand both Samsung and QMobile constitutes 55% to 60% market share out of the approx. 600,000 smart phones being sold every month, the rest being shared by Huawei approx. 15%, OPPO approx. 10% and Infinix approx. 3%.

This shift in the fortune of Chinese brand is nothing new, we have seen this in China where a few years back Samsung was running the roost and now looking at IDC 2016 fact sheet, Samsung is nowhere to be seen in Top 5 and four out of Top 5 brands are now Chinese smart phone maker.

A similar trend is expected to be emulated in all key emerging markets in very near future including Pakistan and it will be interesting to see what Samsung and homegrown brands like QMobile will do to counter it.