Samsung has closed down its last smartphone manufacturing plant in China. The company has apparently abandoned its Chinese market amid stiff competition with local brands such as  Huawei, Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi.

Declining Sales In China And India

Samsung used to dominate the Chinese phone market. It held the top spot in the phone market with a volume share of 19 percent in 2013. Sales, however, plummeted. In 2018, it held only 1 percent of the market.

In February, government-affiliated research institute China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, revealed that Samsung's smartphone shipments to China fell to their lowest in six years.

Shipments totaled only 14.5 million units, down by 19.9 percent from 2018 figures, and the lowest since February 2013, when shipments totaled 20.7 million.

"In China, people buy low-priced smartphones from domestic brands and high-end phones from Apple or Huawei. Samsung has little hope there to revive its share," said Cape Investment & Securities analyst Park Sung-soon.

Samsung's sales in India also appears bleak. The company slipped from number 1 phone maker to number 2 last year.

World's Top Smartphone Maker

Despite declining sales in two of the world's largest phone market, Samsung remains one of the largest handset manufacturers globally with a share of 20.8 percent in sales volume, albeit this is down from 21.7 percent in 2018. It is the top smartphone maker in the world.

The company continues to manufacture a large bulk of its budget and mid-range handsets in India for local and overseas markets. The premium devices are manufactured in Vietnam, where it currently employs 200,000 workers in the Hanoi-area who produce nearly 150 million Galaxy devices aimed for the company's East Asian, American, and European markets.

Samsung said that it plans to re-allocate the production equipment used in China to other manufacturing sites depending on production strategies and market needs.