LeEco Poised to Become World's 11th Largest Smartphone Vendor, Says Report

Chinese consumer tech and content giant LeEco, which is set to announce its formal entry into the U.S. market Wednesday (see 1609300064), will ship 25 million smartphones globally this year and become the 11th largest vendor worldwide in 2016, Strategy Analytics said in a Tuesday report. LeEco is the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone player, “due to cost-competitive hardware, improving distribution, and a growing ecosystem of media content,” said the report. LeEco shipped only 3.9 million smartphones in 2015, it said. “LeEco is in the process of building a multi-platform ecosystem, using smartphones, smart TVs and other hardware products to distribute its growing media portfolio,” said Strategy Analytics. “LeEco is sometimes called the Netflix of China, due to its compelling range of local Chinese video and other content. It remains to be seen whether LeEco can replicate its China success across the US, India or elsewhere, due to local tastes or copyright barriers, but LeEco is clearly growing at a very rapid rate and the vendor is an emerging threat to mass-market smartphone rivals such as Alcatel, Huawei and Samsung.”