Realme eyes 50% sales growth this year

Realme, a fast-growing Chinese smartphone brand, aims to maintain 50 percent year-on-year growth in unit sales volume in 2022, as it works hard to crack the premium segment.

Xu Qi, vice-president of Realme, said the company will allocate 70 percent of its research and development budget this year to creating high-end products as part of the young brand's broader push to resonate with consumers that crave such goods.

Launched in 2018, Realme is a fast-growing smartphone brand that chiefly relies on its resonance with younger consumers. In 2021, Realme sold more than 60 million units globally, marking a 50 percent year-on-year increase that bucked an average industry decline.

Realme is now the sixth largest smartphone brand in the world, and is among the top five smartphone vendors in 21 markets. In India, its position reached to No 2.

The company unveiled its first flagship premium smartphone Realme GT2 Pro earlier this week. Priced from 3,899 yuan ($611.8) in China, the new model is equipped with United States chipmaker Qualcomm Inc's Snapdragon 8 processor. The smartphone is made of new "natural" polymers with a finish developed by Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa.

"The Chinese market and the European market will become Realme's two key markets and our engine of future growth, which will also have a positive influence on our global business layout," Xu said.

Specifically, the company will have better talent concentrated in these two markets and it will give benefits to consumers at key points to gain market competitiveness. It will also develop strategic investment strategies in products based on the two markets' characteristics.