Oppo Confirms It's Going After a Hobbled Huawei

What’s New: Smartphone-maker Oppo is aiming to sell 100 million units in the second half of this year, up more than 50% from the 62 million units it shipped for the same period of 2019.

Within that total, the company is aiming to boost sales in its home China market by 30% or more year-on-year, Liu Bo, president of the company’s China region, said in a note to Oppo’s local partners on Monday. Those figures are roughly in line with company plans disclosed by an Oppo source to Caixin last week. 

The company shipped about 47 million smartphones globally in the first half of the year, just over half of those in its home China market, according to Strategy Analytics. The new 147 million full-year sales target would represent 28% growth over its shipments for all of 2019.

What’s going on here: Oppo’s aggressive second-half sales target comes despite weak global smartphone sales in the first half of the year during the pandemic.

But the company and many of its domestic peers like Xiaomi and global peers like Apple have their eye on industry leader Huawei, which industry analysts estimate will run out of smartphone chips early next year under the bite of U.S. sanctions.

Huawei claimed the title of world’s biggest smartphone-maker in this year’s second quarter, with one-fifth of the global market. But many consumers may soon start to abandon the company over concerns about its future — creating a huge opportunity for Oppo and others hoping to steal its market share.

Related: Oppo Boosts Smartphone Production Over 50%, Looking to Fill Huawei Void 

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use. To read the full story in Chinese, click here. 

Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com) and editor Joshua Dummer (joshuadummer@caixin.com)

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