The world’s most popular Chinese smartphone for 2019 isn’t from Huawei

Apple’s iPhones and Samsung handsets were among the top 10 bestsellers, but the Oppo A5 was also a big hit

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The Oppo A5 currently sells for less than US$200 in China. (Picture: Oppo)

Karen Chiu

Published: 2:31pm, 3 Mar 2020

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Huawei is the world’s biggest smartphone vendor after Samsung, so you might have thought that its smartphones were among the top 10 best-selling models in 2019. But according to research firm Counterpoint, that’s not the case.

Last year’s best-seller list is made up almost entirely of models from Apple and Samsung, with the iPhone XR leading the pack. But taking the fifth spot was the Oppo A5, a budget handset from the Dongguan-based manufacturer. In fact, the model and its variant, A5s, were the most popular smartphones in both China and the rest of Asia-Pacific.

Oppo, a sister company of Vivo and OnePlus, is increasingly eyeing overseas customers. For the first time last year, it shipped more than half of its smartphones outside of China, according to IDC. Another bright spot for Oppo? Its two-year-old spinoff brand Realme had one of the five best-selling phones in Asia (excluding China) last year.

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