Chinese OEM’s Selling Premium Smartphones At Throwaway Prices

It is no secret that almost every phone in the market, irrespective of the branding is “Made in China”. Until recently, Almost all Chinese smartphones lacked one common thing – The premium experience. Major OEM’s until now were able to distinguishing themselves from the local Chinese OEM’s by offering a complete premium experience right from the hardware to custom OEM specific UI.

For a long time Chinese OEM’s were mainly using Mediatek processors to cut down on the price tag. The manufacturers have moved onto make use of the more premium and community friendly Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipsets. Xiaomi initially started off this revolution to surprise everyone with the price tags. Oppo soon followed making premium phones but their pricing strategy didn’t sell much. The OnePlus has come up with the OnePlus One which is undoubtedly one of the best Android smart phone available for a very low price point. The One Plus one flaunts all the requirements for a premium flagship Android phone.

This revolution made companies like Gionee join the movement but like Oppo did not compete in the price tag war. Gionee now has a subset IUNI which makes smartphones at very affordable prices.

While the build quality and the internals from reputed brands is one part of the story, the Operating System that runs on top is another part of the story. Chinese OEM’s are famous for making devices and forgetting them altogether. Interestingly, things have totally changed now. Xiaomi uses their own MIUI ROM which is highly reputed and very famous among the community. The OnePlus uses CyanogenMod 11s, which is undoubtedly the most famous and sought aftermarket firmware among the community.

Based on the sales, It appears more than 30% of the Android phones sold in the first quarter is from the chinese smart phone vendors.