Samsung's mobile business may be thriving in a lot of markets but there's one market where it has completely been wiped out by the competition: China. Nevermind the fact that it's one of the world's most lucrative markets for smartphones or that it's a country of more than a billion people. Few markets provide the scale and opportunity for expansion that China does, but conquering that beast is no easy task.
As of Q1 2024, Samsung's market share in China's mobile segment stands at 0%, meaning that so few devices are sold that they don't even register a full percentage point in the rankings. Meanwhile, Vivo and Honor took the first two spots with a 17.4% and 16.1% share, followed by Apple in third with 15.7% and Huawei in fourth with its 15.5% share, according to the latest data by Counterpoint Research.
Things weren't always so bad for Samsung's mobile devices in China. It had a respectable market share hovering between 20-30% up until 2013, making it one of the leading smartphone companies in the country alongside the likes of Apple and LG. While LG is nowhere to be found in the smartphone market now, Apple has managed to retain a considerable chunk of the market.
To be fair, Samsung's decline in China isn't entirely the company's failure. Yes, it couldn't effectively compete against the meteoric rise of local companies like Huawei, Xiaomi, Vivo, and Oppo, but there were geopolitical factors at play as well. There was a heightened anti-Korean sentiment after the country's deployment of the US-made THAAD anti-ballistic missile defense system, which resulted in many Chinese consumers giving up Korean products. The Galaxy Note 8 saw weak pre-order demand as a direct result of that deployment.
The Chinese government also introduced policies that favored local manufacturers, enabling them to better compete on pricing against the likes of Samsung, which only reduced the company's market share further to below 10% by 2015. Samsung would effectively be wiped out in the market by 2018 when its share first hit 0% and has remained at that level ever since.
Samsung has made some feeble attempts in the past to try and regain its footing in the Chinese market. It launched the Galaxy C series of entry-level phones in 2016 with models like the Galaxy C5, C7, and C9. However, no new model was launched in this series after 2017, highlighting the fact that the lineup had failed to revive Samsung's fortunes in the county. Samsung also catered to more expensive tastes with exclusive models of its foldable phones, launched under the W brand, that often had improvements over their counterpart models from the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip lineups.
Bringing back the Galaxy C lineup, in which the C ostensibly stands for China, is Samsung's latest attempt to establish itself as a contender in China's smartphone market. The newly launched Galaxy C55 is a mid-range device that's effectively a rebranded version of the Galaxy M55. Most of the specs are similar, including the 6.7-inch Super AMOLED+ display, 120Hz refresh rate, 50-megapixel selfie camera, and the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 processor with up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage. It does get a rather unique, yet somewhat unusual in this day and age, stitched leather back design.
How well this device ends up performing in the market remains to be seen, but it's probably fair to say that it won't do much to bring a turnaround for Samsung in China. The company has been trying to find a way to regain market share in China for a few years now. There was talk of a new China Business Innovation Team being put together to revitalize Samsung's business in China as far back as 2021. TM Roh, the head of Samsung's mobile division, also mentioned the creation of a China innovation team during a press conference last year, in what appeared to be an old wine in a new bottle situation.
Let's face it. There's nothing special about the Galaxy C55 and I can bet there are many other devices from local manufacturers that provide better specifications, features, and design that Samsung's latest offering for customers in China. I hope that this innovation team's plan to reverse fortunes in the country go beyond launching basic phones, because that's not going to cut it anymore.
Even the early advantage that Samsung enjoyed with its Galaxy Z Flip and Galaxy Z Fold devices in China is likely to fade in a couple of years. While Samsung was able to clinch a nearly 30% share of China's foldable phone market, local vendors have come back with a vengeance, with multiple foldable phone options across different price segments from the likes of Huawei, Opppo, Xiaomi, Vivo, Honor, and Motorola.
There's no denying the major cultural shift that's happened in China over the past decade. Consumers aren't actively opting for foreign products like they used to before. A growing number of people now believe that local options are better and can easily provide the same, if not better, experience than foreign products.
Even Apple is having to contend with this shift in mindset as it now struggles with weak demand in China, which has historically been one of its most important markets. It's also seeing the impact of geopolitical tensions between China and the US. This even forced Apple to directly offer a rare discount on the iPhone 15 in China.
Since it's basically starting from scratch again in China, this is both a blessing and a curse for Samsung. It's a curse because trying to rebuild that brand equity that has been decimated over the past decade is not going to be easy. It's a blessing because it provides Samsung with a clean slate to reintroduce itself to consumers, particularly the younger generation who may have never owned a Samsung phone before.
Its current position as one of the leading vendors of foldable phones in China can be leveraged. Samsung will also need more local software integrations and partnerships that effectively cater to the needs of Chinese consumers. Using Baidu for Galaxy AI in China was one such step in that direction, and Samsung will need a lot more of this if it wants to have any chance of making a dent in the country's smartphone market.
