In November 2013, according to ZDC report, Chinese smartphone market brand awareness basically didn’t change. iPhone 5S ranked the top in product awareness, LG Nexus 5 gained product awareness rapidly and soon ranked in top 10 list. On the whole, the competition grew more intense in smartphone market, especially in android OS market.
Brand Awareness
Samsung ranked top in brand awareness ranking in November with 21.8%, Apple ranked the second with 12.6%. Lenovo remained in the third place with 7.8%. Compared to October, the top 7 brands kept stable, Samsung, Lenovo, Nokia and HTC went up a little while Apple dropped 0.2%. Huawei and Sony Ericsson remained the same with October. LG increased by five places in November because of LG Nexus 5 (16GB). Motorola and Vivo both increased by one place in the rank, while Xiaomi suffered the biggest drop in November.
Product Awareness
iPhone 5S gained 4.2% product awareness in November, ranking the top. Two Samsung smartphones ranked the second and third on the list. On the top 15 smartphones list, Apple was the biggest winner with four smartphones. Samsung had three smartphones on the top 15 list.
Chinese smartphone manufacturers together had 3 smartphones on the list, decreasing 1 compared to October. MX3 ranked the fourth, OPPO N1 and Vivo X3 ranked the 12th and 15th.
The top 15 smartphones were mainly quad-core phones, and 11 out of 15 had 4.5 inches screen size. 14 smartphones installed 8 million and above pixels camera.
Smartphones between 1,000 to 2,000 yuan (USD 163 to 327) gained the highest awareness of 24.4% in November 2013. Price range between 2,001 to 3,000 yuan (USD 327 to 490) awareness hit 20% in November, increasing about 2% monthly. Smartphones between 3,001 to 4,000 yuan (USD 490 to 654) had the largest increase of 6.3%, reaching 18.4%.
ZDC data showed that in November, the number of quad-core smartphones broke 400, gained 52.3% awareness. Single-core and dual-core smartphones’ awareness dropped slightly.
Smartphones with 12 million and above pixels’ awareness kept growing, reaching 28.5%. The rest all dropped in November.
Android’s awareness remained the same, iOS dropped by 0.2%. Notably, Windows Phone’s brand awareness increased by 0.7% to 7.7% in November 2013.
Smartphones with 5 inches and above screen size gained more awareness in November 2013, hitting 24.4%. 4.6-5.0 inches screen size had the highest awareness of 33.4%.
Case Study
In 2013, from January to November, LG brand awareness fluctuated between 2.3% to 2.8%, and the rank remained as 14 or 15. But because of new product LG Nexus 5 entering market in November, LG brand awareness went up to 4.3% and its rank improved to the eighth dramatically.
ZDC data showed that LG had 15 smartphones in the market, and LG Nexus 5 was the newest product and the official Android OS smartphone. From November 1 to 30, LG Nexus 5 brand awareness increased rapidly and remained high since 15th.