VIVO SET TO INVADE WESTERN MARKETS
Smartphone maker to start selling gadgets in Russia in coming months
VIVO, the fast-growing smartphone brand backed by reclusive Chinese billionaire Duan Yongping, will begin selling to Western markets for the first time as it accelerates a global expansion.
Emboldened by its success against Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co at home, the company now intends to tackle developed markets with higher-end devices. In coming months, China’s third-largest smartphone brand will market its gadgets, which include the flagship V7+, in Russia, Taiwan and Singapore.
The company launched the X20 in Hong Kong yesterday and Africa was on the cards for early next year, it said in a statement.
Vivo is emblematic of a new crop of Chinese firms that have squeezed out foreign labels at home and have aggressively explored markets abroad.
Vivo, which kicked off an overseas expansion via Thailand in 2014, built a domestic customer base by enlisting tens of thousands of retailers in rural areas and poorer cities where the competition was scarcer, a tactic that helped Vivo and counterpart Oppo — another of Duan’s startups — dethrone Apple in shipments.
Vivo was founded in 2009 and, along with Oppo, came out of nowhere to squeeze out thenleader Xiaomi Corp in the rankings.
They eschewed e-commerce to instead court the physical stores where an estimated three-quarters of smartphone sales still take place, and packed high-end components into handsets that sold at a fraction of Apple’s.
Vivo itself is known for its fastcharging devices with outsized batteries and memory. Today, the company is ranked just below Oppo in Chinese sales and is an official sponsor of both the 2018 FIFA World Cup and India’s cricket league.
Entering Russia means facing off against Samsung and Apple, which together controlled close to half of the country’s market share in the second quarter, according to Counterpoint Research.
And a number of Chinese brands have already made inroads before Vivo, including Xiaomi and Huawei Technologies Co, China’s No. 1 mobile name.