Realme is Philippines’ no.1 smartphone brand according to both Canalys and IDC!


Xiaomi’s just getting too tacky these days, and RealmeUI is balanced in terms of optimization and features.

Realme 10 during its debut day

Both IDC and Canalys have reported that Realme continued its streak of being the top smartphone maker in the Philippines. In fact, in Canalys’ list, all consist of companies under BBK Electronics. Due to their phones’ attractive design and brilliant marketing skills, one could easily forget how expensive they are over those cheaper “flagship-like” phones with a particularly high refresh rate and a better array of customers and/or software.

According to IDC, quarter-on-quarter sales actually declined by 8%, and the number of phones shipped is now further done by 3.8 million units. This marks the fifth consecutive time that the smartphone market in the Philippines declined. This happens because these days, their midrangers they bought a few months ago can last even up to two years now and there really is no need to change every month.

However, even if the quarter-on-quarter sales declined, the year-on-year sales grew in the ultrabudget range. IDC noted that consumers have preferred more budget-friendly options than midranger ones. This is also one of the primary reasons why Realme (including Narzo) stayed on top. They know their consumers well. In fact, Narzo reported that their best-selling smartphone was the Narzo 50i Prime, an ultrabudget phone.

The company captured 23.4% of all smartphone sales in the PH market. That’s a really huge slice of the pie. This is slightly larger than in the second quarter, which was 21.8%. Another notable thing to see here is Transsion’s ranking, which is second place in smartphone shares. This company actually holds three well-known brands (Tecno, Infinix, Itel) that are known for its amazingly specced phones at a low cost. For instance, it is rare to see a phone with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, AND AMOLED, all at the same time, yet the Infinix Note 12 G96 managed to do all of that at a Php10K price point.

When Narzo became independent, Realme aggressively pushed the brand and made its more budget-friendly offering while Realme offered more premium devices.

Third on this list is Samsung with 15.6% and their best-selling devices are the premium-looking and reliable A series, behind it is Oppo and then finally, Vivo. It’s interesting to see that 3 out of 4 of BBK’s brands made it to the list. It just goes to show how great their marketing really is.

The “Others” list which includes Huawei, Honor, Cherry Mobile, and other brands that weren’t listed, actually had a larger piece of the pie than Samsung, Oppo, and Vivo combined. However, their sales may be lackluster individually as they only accumulated 16.6% of the market together.

Also, notice someone missing here? Xiaomi did not make it to the top 5 this time around. It may have been due to the issues regarding their budget offerings, which include software glitches and optimizations which are slowly destroying the brand.

On another note, interestingly, Realme also got its top position maintained for five times in a row, in Canalys’ smartphone share rankings.

Also, just like with IDC’s report, curiously, Xiaomi is nowhere to be seen. While Realme remained first, garnering 19% of all smartphone sales in the country, the country’s yearly growth significantly declined, down by 28%. Meanwhile, Vivo has the potential to take them over, with 88% yearly growth. In this list, only Transsion and Vivo got a positive growth this second quarter. Samsung has 13% of all smartphone shares but declined by 18% and Oppo has the lowest decline, but only garnered 16% of that pie. Realme’s main highlight here is the gaming smartphone GT Neo 3.

During this quarter, Vivo released two of their best-selling phones, the Y16 and V25 series. The V25 series targeted vloggers which significantly helped in boosting their sales nationwide as more and more users used social media apps like YouTube and TikTok to make videos.

Transsion’s growth was due to their aggressive pricing. Their flagship offering, the Zero Ultra, is priced at a sub-Php20K price point and offers a waterfall screen and a telephoto camera, and at this price range, that’s pretty rare to see. Also, their best selling smartphones (Camon and HOT series), competes well as they offer ridiculously low prices with good specs.