Photo/Shetuwang

Oct. 12 (NBD) -- China's consumer electronics market is experiencing a reshuffle, making many established phone brands even hard to survive. 

Japanese electronics products provider Sharp will temporarily stop its cell phone business in China, an unnamed source close to the company said to NBD Thursday.

It's noted that Sharp cleared all posts on its official Sina Weibo account July this year. Sharp Global CEO Luo Zhongsheng also changed his Sina Weibo title description to a senior telecom blogger.

NBD also noticed that no cell phone is currently available on Sharp's official stores on online marketplaces JD and T-mall.

If the information was true, this would be Sharp's third retreat from China's cell phone market, with the first two occurred in 2005 and 2013, respectively. 

Backed by its largest shareholder Foxconn, Sharp showed signs of recovery and staged a comeback in China's smartphone segment with the release of the full-screen AQUOS S2 smartphone in 2017.

However, the phone was not well received by Chinese consumers. Actually, Sharp has been working on full-screen models since 2013, but not logged very good market performance yet.

Weak sales of cell phones is believed to be the major trigger of the breakdown of Sharp's cell phone team in mainland China and the stepdown of Luo Zhongsheng, said news outlet Beijing Business Today citing a Foxconn insider.

Dai Cheng-wu, President of Sharp, said September this year the company would launch smartphones featuring its own OLED screen. But in order to avoid competing with Foxconn's OEM brands, Sharp will turn to commercial and industrial cell phones, reported the 21st Century Business Herald. The move makes Sharp's customer group even more limited.  

More importantly, Foxconn is currently focusing its resources on Nokia, the person close to Sharp further disclosed. In May this year, Nokia manufacturer HMD secured 100 million U.S. dollars of investment from investors including an affiliated firm of Foxconn subsidiary FIH Mobile. This indicates that less money will flow to Sharp.

Wang Yanhui, secretary-general of the Mobile China Alliance, noted that it's hard for smaller brands to survive in China if they cannot distinguish themselves from others with unique products.

Based on data released by international research institution Canalys, a total of 104 million smartphones were sold in China in the second quarter of 2018. Among all smartphone makers, Huawei took the first place with a market share of 27 percent, followed by OPPO, Vivo, Xiaomi and Apple.

Small vendors are finding it tough to compete, as the top five now account for 90 percent of shipments, against 73 percent a year ago.

Email: tanyuhan@nbd.com.cn