OPPO named as fastest-growing OEM in 2018's premium smartphone space

Counterpoint Research's latest report on the premium smartphone market shows that OPPO made it to the #4 spot in terms of OEMs trading in this space in 2018. It did so by increasing its share from 1% to 6%, which represents a total growth of 863% for the Chinese company for that year.

OnePlus and Xiaomi were found to be the next fastest-growing brands in this category, as they grew their global high-end phone businesses by 209% and 149% respectively during 2018. As a result, OnePlus also made it into the top 5 OEMs in this respect. Huawei, Samsung and Apple completed this line-up last year.

OPPO's impressive gains were attributed to activity in its own domestic market, where the more recent R-series phones played a strong role in propelling it to the top in this arena. Ironically, this line has been supplanted by the new Reno name this year. The premium smartphone market in China grew by 37% compared to 2017, whereas the same in the US grew by 10%.

As for this year, it is likely that OPPO will at least maintain this level of success. Counterpoint projects that the premium market will be driven by next-gen features such as AI, increased camera counts, truly edge-to-edge screens, and higher memory configurations; all of which the Reno line (and possibly the Find to come after them) can offer. The analysts also believe that this market will continue to be buoyed up by inflated asking prices in 2019.