Vivo unveils new phones for holiday season

Chinese company Vivo has unveiled its latest smartphone series, the S16, to target photo-loving consumers, after it secured the top position in the Chinese smartphone market by shipments.

The move is also the latest push by Vivo to defy a market decline to seek for growth in the holiday season and to stand out amid intensified competition.

The Vivo S16 series smartphones come with a center-positioned punch-hole 16 mega-pixel selfie camera. Vivo S16 Pro, a premium version, comes with a 50 main mega-pixel camera on the back.

Smartphone sales in China fell 11.9 percent year-on-year to 71.13 million units in the third quarter of 2022, according to market research firm International Data Corporation. The decline was narrower than the previous two quarters despite the continued weak demand.

Vivo returned to the top spot with a shipment of 14.2 million units in the July-September period, accounting for 20 percent of the market share. Honor shipped 12.7 million units of smartphones, ranking in second place and taking up 17.9 percent of the market share, followed by Oppo and Apple.

Furthermore, premium foldable products saw triple-digit year-on-year growth and shipped more than one million units, which were the highest-ever shipments in a single quarter, said IDC.