You may not have heard of Transsion, but the Chinese phone maker is quietly making a name for itself – and over the course of this year it's established itself as one of the top five smartphone manufacturers, picking up market share from the likes of Apple and Samsung along the way.
A new report on Q3 2023 phone sales from Canalys (via Android Central) shows that overall sales declined by a single percentage point across the quarter (July, August, and September) compared to the same period in 2022. Samsung leads the way with a 20% share, Apple is on 17%, Xiaomi is third with 14%, and Oppo is on 9%.
And then in fifth place, we have Transsion, also at 9% – up from a 6% share last year. That impressive growth is based on "competitive products" in "emerging markets", according to Canalys, and the analysts at the company are predicting further growth for Transsion, as long as they "play their cards well".
The report also notes the positive impact that the launch of the iPhone 15 is going to have on phone sales in the second half of the year and the progress that Huawei is making in its home country of China. There's a new Huawei Mate 60 phone, although you can't get it in the US, UK, or Australia.
The Transsion story
Transsion will be a new name to a lot of people, and it's also relatively new as a company compared with Apple, Samsung, and Google, but it's actually 17 years old now. It was founded in 2006 in Hong Kong, and it initially focused its phone sales in Africa, helping it get a foothold in the developing market.
It now also sells handsets in the Middle East, Latin America, and India, and they're mostly budget devices that maximize the value-for-money proposition. It's a little bit reminiscent of how Huawei started out, offering a decent level of hardware specs while keeping costs as low as possible.
Transsion is responsible for the Itel, Tecno, and Infinix phone brands, and we have mentioned some of the manufacturer's handsets on TechRadar before. The company originally concentrated on releasing feature phones and didn't make a smartphone until 2014, seven years after Apple unveiled the first iPhone.
With shipments of 22.7 million units in Q3 2023, Transsion is now a serious player in global smartphone sales. We'll have to wait and see whether company executives decide to expand its operations into the US, UK, and Australian markets in the future – but it's got an increasingly solid base to build on.
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