According to fresh data coming from China, Apple’s iPhone 6S seems to have had a really tough 2016 in this country.
For the first time in years, Apple has been toppled off the top spot when it comes to smartphone sales in China, this time managing to part with a total of about 12 million units of the iPhone 6S – a phone that was released in 2015. The American tech giant was beaten to top spot by the little known Oppo, a phone company that has been growing rapidly in the recent past. The OEM’s Oppo R9, otherwise known as the Oppo F1 Plus, sold about 17 million units, 5 million more than Apple’s flagship, Counterpoint Research reports.
This is unusual, especially since it is coming from a company that is little-known to the world (although OnePlus 3T is a product of OnePlus, a subsidiary of Oppo). However, given that Apple’s iPhone 6S had not-so-many goodies to offer, this was bound to happen at some point. So, what really made the Oppo R9 outsell the Apple iPhone 6S in China this past 2016?
According to industry analysts, there are a few things that contributed towards the downfall of Apple’s iPhone 6S and the success of Oppo’s F1 Plus. For starters, the Chinese market is now skewed towards the midrange smartphone family, something that is not doing any favors to Apple. The company unveiled the iPhone SE to cater for this market, but the response wasn’t the best. While companies such as Oppo can easily fit a device like the R9 into the midrange market, Apple has always posed its devices as high-end offerings, thus declaring them out of reach for many in China.
At launch, the Apple iPhone 6S was available for $649. On the contrary, the Oppo R9 sells for about $405 – a difference of close to $250. This is a lot of money for folks in a country that has some regions still underdeveloped. For this reason, the iPhone 6S could not just stand in the Oppo R9’s path.
The researchers also note that the current smartphone market is driven by the desire for a number of specs. These include fast charging technology, bigger batteries, cameras as well as OLED display screens. On these fronts, the Oppo R9 is the clear winner. The phone has a larger 5.5-inch AMOLED display screen that has a Full HD resolution and is protected by the proven Corning Gorilla Glass 4 technology. On the contrary, the iPhone 6S has a 3D Touch 4.7-inch LCD display screen that ships with an HD resolution and its protection comes from what Apple calls ion-strengthened glass that also features an oleophobic coating.
It gets even better for the Oppo R9 thanks to the fact that it comes with a much bigger battery unit of 2850mAh. In addition, you also get support for fast charging via the company’s proprietary VOOC Flash Charge technology. This promises to charge this battery from 0-75% in just half an hour. As for the Apple iPhone 6S, you get a battery unit of just 1715mAh and worse off, there is no support for fast charging technology.
On paper, the two phones have just about the same main camera. The Oppo R9 has a 13MP shooter with an aperture of f/2.2, PDAF and a LED flash. On the other hand, the iPhone 6S has a 12MP shooter with the same aperture, PDAF, but it gets a dual-tone LED flash. The iPhone can also record 2K videos, capture 4K images and so on, but the R9 can only manage up to 1080p videos.
It is the front part where the Oppo R9 grabs all the attention thanks to its huge 16MP snapper that comes with an aperture of f/2.0. As for the iPhone 6S, the selfie shooter has a 5MP lens that ships with an aperture of f/2.2, but you’ll for sure come across more features on the latter when compared to the former. Both phones have a front-facing fingerprint scanner that doubles as the home button.
Under the hood, the Oppo R9 comes with an Helio P10 SoC that is paired with a RAM of 4GB and internal storage of 64GB. This can be expanded via a microSD card of up to 256GB. The entry-level iPhone 6S has 16GB, but the most common variant has 32GB of storage. There is no microSD card storage, which is not strange for an Apple device. As for the processor, you get an Apple A9 SoC that is paired with 2GB RAM, half what the R9 offers.
Apparently, Apple is expected to make a sensational return to the top courtesy of the 2017 iPhone 8, but this is still months away.