Present on the Italian market since 2019, but with a launch with great fanfare during IFA 2020 last September, Realme is the smartphone brand with the highest growth in 2020. Realme is not a sub-brand of OPPO, as it is often mistakenly defined, but a company that is part of the financial group OPlus, which manages the investments of OnePlus, Oppo e Realme, and is led in part by OnePlus co-founder Pete Lau. The three companies are separate entities that share access to the same electronic components supply chain but operate separately in everything else.
We interviewed Madhav Sheth, CEO of Realme Europa, to take stock of the situation since launch, analyze the results of the last 4 months and look to 2021 with the projects in the pipeline.
“Realme is al seventh place in the ranking of smartphone brands, and has been for five consecutive quarters. In 2020 we shipped the 67% on smartphones more than 2019 globally, and this makes us the brand with the highest growth“, Despite the pandemic still in progress.
Realme was born as a brand for young people, with a strong online footprint: smartphones were initially only available through e-commerce. To date, however, they are present both online and offline, not only for the sale of smartphones, but also of all the products that Realme defines as “AIoT”: from smartwatches to wireless headphones, passing through sensors for home automation up to TVs, with the latter that will arrive on the shelves in the course of 2021.
“In Italy, we know that the consumer wants to touch the product firsthand before buying it, and for this reason, in addition to having a strategic agreement with Amazon for online sales, we also have an agreement with Unieuro that we are extending, and we don’t stop there: we want Realme products in as many electronics stores as possible, because we know that it is the key to convincing and making our brand known to Europeans ”, and above all to Italians.
Although Italy was not the first country where Realme sold its products in Europe, Madhav Sheth announces a commitment to involve Italian users more closely, and literally speaking the same language. “We are building an Italian team of Realme, which speaks the same language as consumers and who knows how to create an offer suited to their needs”, with a staff of 100 people by the end of the year.
The Italian consumer, in fact, has his own culture of electronics, and has a tendency to change smartphones several times a year, not so much because he needs to upgrade, but because he wants to change products, try different things. The whole range of Realme smartphones today is under € 800, with many proposals among 200 e i 500€, and with many announcements throughout the year. This makes the company a target for consumers who are always looking for something new, but without running out of wallets.
“The smartphone always remains the center of our offer”, continues Sheth, “and we will do so by continuing to improve the control app Realme Link, starting with a new version that eliminates the steps required to connect an accessory or device, making the user experience much simpler and faster ”.
We are seeing a big change: since the outbreak of the pandemic, all offline activities have had to transform, migrating online. This has increased the demand for products connected to the internet and restricted their requirements: if before a certain model of smartphone was enough, now we need one that is more powerful, faster and better in all aspects because it is the access point to all our life, which is now virtually all digital. “I think consumers are also looking for a product that can offer 5G right away, which today is not yet available to everyone but whose coverage will grow a lot in 2021,” continues Sheth. “Almost all of our smartphones have 5G, and between March and April, when we present the new 8 series, there will be even more choice even for higher segments”.