EXCLUSIVE: Questions Raised Over Oppo’s Realme Smartphone Market Share Claims
Realme is a so-called Smartphone brand who describe themselves as “The fastest growing smartphone brand in the world”, this week Chinese management plan to launch the brand into the Australian market despite questions being raised about thir claimed marketshare.
The problem is that the biggest smartphone research Companies in the world including IDC, Gartner, Counterpoint, not only don’t recognise the brand, they can’t seem to trace the brand in their analysis of the smartphone market despite the claims being made by the Oppo subsidiary.
A Gartner executive said “They are still very small, having only launched in China in May 2018. They might be included in the “Other Vendors” category in our data”.
However, a search of the ‘Other Vendor’ category with several global smartphone research Companies including Gartner, is still failing to quantify how Realme can lay claim to being the fastest-growing smartphone brand in the world ahead of their Australian launch.
Even their PR Company Thrive have not been able to justify the claim being made in their event invitation seen below.
They claim they are a disruptive Chinese brand, which already has more than 10 million users worldwide in 18 markets figures that research Companies claim should be showing up in their global research.
When we asked Gartner to break out any market share for the Chinese Company an executive came back to us claiming ‘Our lead smartphone analyst Anshul Gupta confirmed that we don’t break them out separately so, unfortunately, we don’t have data points on RealMe”.
The Company plans to four devices in Australia, with the line-up set to be revealed at its official launch party on the 17th October in Sydney.
So, who is Real me?
The brand is owned by Chinese BBK Electronics, which also owns OnePlus, OPPO, and Vivo, in the past Oppo tried to lay claim to being, the #3 brand in Australia despite selling significantly fewer smartphone units than the TCL Mobile owned brand Alcatel who is officially recognised by IDC as Australia’s #3 smartphone brand.
This is the same Company that will shortly launch the TCL Plex in Australia.
Realme first appeared in China in 2010 as “OPPO Real”.
It was a sub-brand of OPPO Electronics Corporation until its separation in 2018, after which it became an independent company. The Company did not enter the European market until June 2019. Neither is the brand ranged by major US consumer electronics retailers however it is sold on the Amazon web site.
The CEO of Realme in Australia is Andy Yang who up until May 2019 was an account manager at Oppo Australia.
A senior executive from a key competitor said “Claims that the Realme brand is the fastest-growing smartphone brand in the world is pure fiction. This is an Oppo subsidiary that is being launched because Oppo wants to compete in the bottom end market of the Australian smartphone market and don’t want the Oppo brand associated with discounted cheap smartphones”.
Thrive is refusing to say which Realme models will be launched in Australia this week however ChannelNews can reveal that one of the models is the Realme X2 Pro that will house Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 855 Plus processor and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Atmos support.
Also built-in will be 50W SuperVOOC charging and a 64-megapixel quad-camera and a telephoto sensor.
It will also have a 13-megapixel telephoto lens (with 3x optical zoom), an 8-megapixel ultrawide sensor and a 2-megapixel depth sensor.
The global CEO of Realme is former OPPO Vice President Sky Li, who is also claiming that Realme intends to “disrupt the Australian market”.
The four new Realme devices will range from $200 to $500 and be sold online, none of Australia’s main carriers, Telstra, Optus or Vodafone are planning to range or sell the brand.
The phones will also be available on e-commerce eBay, Amazon, Kogan, Catch and Mobilciti, as well as the brand’s website realme.com/au.
realme will also enter the consumer finance market in Australia, working closely with leading provider Make It Mine, with consumers able to access realme products through the platform.
Yang said “As a disruptive smartphone brand, Realme has won more than 10 million fans in just 15 months, a record in the smartphone industry. Our Dare to Leap spirit drives us to innovate and challenge the status quo, which is what we are doing globally and aim to continue in Australia.”