Affordability, reliability play key role in smartphone success in the Philippines

AFFORDABILITY and reliability play a major role in achieving success in the Philippines’ mobile smartphone market, a study by e-commerce company iPrice Group said.

“Filipinos’ interests in Apple and Samsung continue to battle neck and neck for the top spot,” iPrice said in its report, citing data from 2019 to 2021.

The study analyzed the popularity of the flagship phones for the top smartphone brands in the country.

iPrice identified Apple, Samsung, Vivo, and Oppo as the top four most popular smartphone brands in the country.

“Apple’s release of the iPhone 11 in 2019, the iPhone 12 in 2020, and the iPhone 13 series gained a lot of attention, [similar to] Samsung’s release of Galaxy S10 in 2019, Galaxy S20 in 2020, and Galaxy S21 in 2021,” the group said.

Meanwhile, Vivo has been receiving “more attention” since 2020 when it released the Vivo X50 series with its “big brother”, the X50 pro.

“The hype is quite high since it’s the first smartphone to have a gimbal stabilizer camera, and it was the only flagship phone brand in our data to have an increase 90 days after its release by 929%,” iPrice said.

“They have found their niche, which is more focused on photography,” the group noted. “This can be one of the main reasons why it’s attracting user interest, especially from the younger generation.”

On Oppo, the group said that interest level among consumers is “somehow close to Vivo.”

“They both use the same strategy in terms of pricing,” the group noted.

According to the International Data Corp. (IDC), smartphone shipments to the Philippines continued to fall in the second quarter of the year due to low demand and supply.

Smartphone shipments fell 3.1% in the second quarter compared with the same period last year, IDC said in a recent analysis report.

“[But] it grew 9.1% quarter-on-quarter, shipping 4.3 million units in the second quarter,” it said.

Consumer spending on smartphones is expected to continue to be under pressure from the rising cost of living and higher prices of essential goods. — Arjay L. Balinbin