Chinese smartphone brands Vivo and Oppo make up roughly 15% of domestic shipments, gained by a focus on traditional retail
Josh Horwitz / Quartz : Tweets: @iankar_ and @jonrussell Tweets: Ian Kar / @iankar_ : 2 small smartphone co's are taking market share in China using traditional methods like retail sales & print ads http://qz.com/... Jon Russell / @jonrussell : Once again, mystery over whether (and how) Oppo, OnePlus and (now) Vivo are related http://qz.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
In August 2015, Vivo and Oppo were still being framed as 'small' players holding roughly 15% of Chinese shipments through an unfashionable bet on brick-and-mortar retail and print advertising, even as reporters puzzled over whether Oppo, OnePlus, and Vivo were corporately connected. The follow-on coverage confirms the bet compounded fast: within a year the two brands, both owned by BBK Electronics, had surged to second and third place in China on the strength of their store networks.
The trajectory kept running — Reuters traced how OPPO reached number one in China through savvy marketing and sales tactics, and by January 2021 Counterpoint had Oppo topping China's market at 21% share, with Vivo right behind at 20%. This 2015 data point is where that offline-first playbook first showed up in the numbers.
First-order effects
- Online-led Chinese rivals cede ground in tier-two and tier-three cities, where Vivo's and Oppo's retail presence converts walk-in customers that e-commerce-first competitors cannot reach.
- BBK Electronics gains a growing dual-brand footprint in China while the corporate ties between Oppo, Vivo, and OnePlus remain opaque to buyers and press alike.
Second-order effects
- Rivals are forced into expensive channel-building of their own, competing for the same storefronts and sales staff rather than just for online ad inventory.
- Print ads and in-store promotion re-emerge as premium media buys in China's handset market, repricing marketing spend away from the digital channels the leaders favored.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Chinese smartphone competition settles around physical distribution as a durable moat — a structure later reflected in Counterpoint's 2021 ranking, where the two BBK-owned brands held the top two spots ahead of Huawei, Apple, and Xiaomi.
The trend: China's smartphone market rewards whoever owns the last mile of distribution, and Vivo and Oppo's retail-first buildout turned them from fringe players into the country's dominant vendors.