While the global smartphone market faces slowing growth, Chinese brands are forecast to continue to witness double-digit growth in production volumes this year.

According to TrendForce, the average growth rate for Chinese makers will be 11 per cent this year, with strong performances from Oppo, Vivo and Huawei.

Oppo and Vivo are both projected to expand production 40 per cent to 78 million and 66 million units respectively. After becoming the leading Chinese brand by production volume last year, Huawei’s growth has started to slow, with TrendForce forecasting 10.2 per cent growth this year to 119 million units.

Newcomer LeEco, which experienced a rapid rise last year, is expected to expand production from five million units last year to more than 20 million this year. The company recently became the largest shareholder of Coolpad, another Chinese smartphone maker. The tie-up will see LeEco devices, which for now are limited to online sales, become available in Coolpad’s physical retail stores.

“The Chinese market is ever-changing,” said Avril Wu, TrendForce smartphone analyst. “Short product lifecycle and fierce competition lead to constant shifts in the production volume ranking for domestic brands. Lenovo and Xiaomi were Chinese smartphone leaders in 2014, and then Huawei became the number one domestic brand in 2015. This year, however, Oppo and Vivo have taken the spotlight in the home market.”

Taiwan vendors
Asus’ production is expected to grow 34 per cent this year to 21.5 million units. But HTC is forecast to suffer an annual decline of 27 per cent to 13 million units. Production of its latest flagship model, the HTC 10, is expected to only be around one million units. The Taiwanese brand will take on additional smartphone production in the second half of 2016 as a result of receiving manufacturing contracts for Nexus phones from Google.

Smartphone shipments in China continued their downward trend in Q1, falling 5 per cent from a year ago to 104.9 million, as increasing market saturation and the slowing domestic economy curbed demand. Without China helping to drive growth, the global smartphone market decreased 3 per cent in Q1 to 335 million units, according to Strategy Analytics.