Chinese brands gain ground as Mena smartphone sales surge

Marko Rupena/Alamy via Reuters Connect

• Samsung market share down by a fifth
• Chinese brand Xiaomi up 70%
• Sales of iPhones drop 6%

Economic stability and rising populations have fuelled a 20 percent year-on-year surge in the sale of smartphones in the Middle East and North Africa. Chinese brands have made significant gains on other, more established manufacturers.

Smartphone shipments in the Middle East reached 11.5 million units in the second quarter of 2024. That was a 20 percent year-on-year increase, according to data on the Mena market (excluding Turkey) from Singapore consultancy company Canalys.

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Samsung kept its top spot as the region’s most popular smartphone maker, but its market share was down by more than a fifth, to 28 percent. The Korean company’s shipments fell only 3 percent in the second quarter of 2024. 

The budget Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi recorded a 70 percent surge in shipments in the quarter compared with 2023, to 2.3 million. That gave it a 20 percent market share, up from 14 percent in the same quarter last year. 

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Transsion, another Chinese smartphone maker, held the third spot, after a 3 percent increase in shipments gave it a slightly lower overall share of the market, at 16 percent. It was followed by Apple’s iPhone, which suffered a 6 percent drop in shipments and a two percentage point fall in share, to 10 percent.

Chinese phone makers boast a 21 percent market share, which grew by 37 percent in Q2 2024 compared with the same period last year.

Canalys said: “This robust growth was fueled by the region’s strong economic stability and supportive government policies that assisted consumer demand in the smartphone market.”

Manish Pravinkumar, senior analyst at Canalys, said the region’s demographics played a role in the sales surge: “Smartphone brands must adapt to shifting consumer behaviours driven by the growing expat population. 

“Emerging brands are steadily closing the market share gap with leading players in the region, reshaping the competitive landscape.”

Holiday season

While early results showed gains for producers of lower end phones from China, Pravinkumar said he expected higher end brands, such as the iPhone, to do better in the second half of 2024, during the traditional holiday season.

“Apple held a 10 percent market share, with the iPhone 13 and 14 satisfying the region’s iOS demand in Q2. The second half is expected to see a demand increase for upcoming iPhones from the region’s affluent population,” he said.

Research by the market intelligence firm IDC revealed that GCC smartphone markets were up 12.5 percent in unit shipments in Q2 2024 compared to Q2 2023.

Ramazan Yavuz, director at IDC EMEA, said the top three players in the GCC were Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi, with Xiaomi only just behind Apple.

“Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s strong competition in low-end and mid-range segments are boosting the growth in Q2 in GCC markets,” Yavuz said.

The company said Motorola and Infinix were slowly gaining market share, and rounded out the top five in Q2 2024