Exclusive | Chinese smartphone maker hopes to quick-charge growth at home after conquering Indian market
- Realme founder Sky Li said the brand is ready to compete in the high-end market as it prepares to launch its US$700 GT 2 Pro in January
- Three years after spinning out from parent Oppo, Realme has become a top brand in India but faces stiff competition at home from rivals like Xiaomi
Realme, the world’s fastest growing smartphone maker known for its budget hardware, is intensifying efforts to expand in high-end handsets in China, where it hopes to go head-to-head with Apple and other market leaders, the brand’s founder Sky Li Bingzhong told the South China Morning Post.
Since starting Realme as a sub-brand of Oppo in 2018, Li has turned it into one of the top brands in India by offering good hardware at low prices. Now he wants the brand to “break the development bottleneck of just catering to the mid to low-end market”, Li said in an exclusive interview last month.
Li is touting the brand’s premium ambitions ahead of the launch of its GT 2 Pro next month, which is expected to sell for US$700 to US$800 – about the price of the 128GB iPhone 13.
“I really feel huge pressure” to break into the high-end segment, Li said.
This is a big step for the Shenzhen-based company, which reached 100 million smartphones sold in June, 37 months after its founding. It reached that threshold faster than rivals Xiaomi, at 41 months, Apple, at 44 months, and Huawei Technologies Co, at 62 months, according to a report from research firm Strategy Analytics.
The 46-year-old chief executive sees an opportunity for Realme now that the company is no longer just “seeking to survive” and has the technological strength to be competitive. Huawei’s dwindling market share overseas, under pressure from US sanctions, has also opened up new opportunities for Realme, its sister brands Oppo and Vivo, along with Xiaomi.
Before Huawei was hit with sanctions in 2019, 80 per cent of its smartphone volume outside China was for devices priced below US$400, the market segment where Realme primarily competes, said Nabila Popal, research director at IDC.
