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Xiaomi Dominates 5G Android Phone Market in Q2 2021: Strategy Analytics
Citing its latest research, Strategy Analytics said that Xiaomi captured a share of 26 percent in the overall 5G Android phone shipments worldwide. The Beijing-headquartered company shipped 24.3 million units of the total 95 million 5G Android phones shipped globally in the second quarter of 2021, according to the firm.
“Over the past nine quarters, Xiaomi has cumulatively shipped 70 million 5G smartphones,” said Ken Hyers, Director at Strategy Analytics. “Xiaomi’s performance places it closely behind Samsung, which has shipped an impressive 77 million 5G smartphones worldwide over the previous 10 quarters.”
Hyers added by saying that Samsung shipped the world’s first 5G smartphones beginning in the first quarter of 2019.
With the increase in the number of shipments, Xiaomi registered a year-on-year growth of 452 percent in the second quarter. A recent report by Counterpoint showed that the company, which started selling phones exactly ten years back in August 2011, also emerged as the number one smartphone brand in global monthly smartphone sales (sell-through) volumes in June.
Although Xiaomi continued to take on the competition, Huawei remained the cumulative 5G phone leader among Android vendors, according to Strategy Analytics. The company shipped 95 million 5G phones worldwide over the past nine quarters. However, the US sanctions have resulted in a significant drop in its shipment volumes and that collapse has “opened the door” for other Chinese vendors including Lenovo-Motorola, Realme, Oppo, and Honor, Strategy Analytics Associate Director Ville-Petteri Ukonaho said.
Xiaomi was followed by Vivo that managed to capture an 18.5 percent share of the 5G Android phone shipments worldwide in the second quarter. It shipped 17.5 million units during the quarter to rank second in the market.
Vivo sibling Oppo came third with a share of 17.9 percent, followed by Samsung and Realme that both captured 16.5 and 5.9 percent market share, respectively.
In terms of year-on-year growth, Strategy Analytics said that Lenovo-Motorola was the leader with its shipments hitting a whopping 3,480 percent annually in the second quarter. The amalgamation of Lenovo and Motorola, however, had a volume of 1.8 million shipments for the quarter alone.
Realme ranked second in annual growth with 1,773 percent year-on-year increase in volumes in the second quarter of the year, followed by OnePlus that ranked third with its shipments volume growing 877 percent annually.
Top 5 smartphone vendors in 5G Android market globally in Q2 2021
| Smartphone vendor | Shipments (in million) | Market share | Year-on-Year growth | Cumulative shipments growth since Q1 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xiaomi | 24.3 | 25.7% | 452% | 70.4 |
| Vivo | 17.5 | 18.5% | 218% | 66.8 |
| Oppo | 16.9 | 17.9% | 231% | 67.5 |
| Samsung | 15.6 | 16.5% | 126% | 76.5 |
| Realme | 5.6 | 5.9% | 1773% | 12.9 |
Honor — the company that parted ways with Huawei in November — shipped 6.5 million 5G phones in the last two quarters, Strategy Analytics reported. The company notably started its 5G phone shipments mid-way through the first quarter of 2021.
“Lenovo-Motorola, Realme, OnePlus and Honor, are well-positioned for strong growth in the second half of 2021 and in 2022, as they focus on markets and segment such as mid-tier 5G smartphones not fully dominated by their larger peers,” said Yiwen Wu, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.
Last month, a report by consulting firm Kantar showed that demand of 5G phones has grown significantly among customers. That report indicated that over two-thirds of customers in major markets planning to purchase a new smartphone in the next six months prefer getting a 5G model.
Having said that, major markets including India are yet to see the rollout of 5G. Companies including Apple have also just started their journey in the 5G market. It is, therefore, too early to judge whether the next generation of cellular technology would be able to gain more traction over 4G LTE in the worldwide markets and what benefits it would eventually enable for customers — beyond giving faster Internet speeds to access Web services.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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