Oh boy does Xiaomi have some homework to complete? 2018 has been an amazing year for smartphones, without a doubt. We’ve seen many falls and many rises throughout the course of 2018 and without a doubt, Oppo’s new sub-brand Realme has to be one of the biggest rises this year.
For those of you who don’t know, Realme is one of Oppo’s latest sub-brand that focuses on the mid-range market solely as OnePlus and Oppo itself compete for the upper mid-range and high-end market.
As noted in a press release sent to us, the Realme brand has seen immense success over the past two months as it climbs the mid-range ladders in the mid-range market, a market that’s dominated by the likes of Asus and Xiaomi so far. Realme’s presence so far has been driven by e-commerce sales and it seems like the brand would continue to expand its presence in Malaysia really soon.
Across several e-commerce sites such as Lazada and Shopee, Realme has consistently been the best-selling brand in Malaysia so far and also notes that it expects to see year-over-year growth of 11% over the next year. While specific numbers weren’t released, both, Lazada and Shopee had Realme on their homepages earlier this week to commemorate the launch of the brand in Malaysia.
Realme began its run in Malaysia with the help of three enticing devices, namely, the Realme 2, Realme 2 Pro and the Realme C1, each one catering a very specific customer with prices ranging from RM 449 (US $107) to RM 999 ( US $239 ) with a fairly decent range of hardware.
The Realme 2 Pro packs a Snapdragon 660 SoC along with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Compare that to Xiaomi’s offerings such as the Mi A2 and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 and you know where this is going. Furthermore, both the Realme 2 and Realme 2 Pro borrow the notch found on the OnePlus 6T. Pair that with a large beautiful display and a decent set of internals and Realme has a winner, at least on paper.
Given how well Realme has integrated into the Malaysian market over the past two months is definitely enticing to see, especially given how well the brand has been in the making for a while. There’s no doubt that the executives at Realme did their homework as Xiaomi had also released a huge bomb a while ago, the so-called “flagship-killer killer” Poco F1 (review).
Given how well these phones are priced and now that Asus has also launched their take on the mid-range market with the Asus Zenfone Max Pro M2, the competition is about to get a whole lot more heated.
