TRANSSION Holdings, a Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer, saw both its revenue and profits dropped in the first quarter of this year as global smartphone shipments reported a decrease of 12.9% compared with a year ago. During the quarter, the company’s revenue dropped 1.75% from a year ago to 11.06 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion), while its net profit slid 7.62% from last year to 711 million yuan, according to its filings to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. But CITIC Securities analysts say the company’s shipments will pick up in the second quarter as global trade recovers. This comes after the company recorded rapid growth last year. It raked in 49.41 billion yuan in revenue last year, representing an increase of 30.75% from a year ago, and realized net profits of 3.11 billion yuan, up 30.42% from a year earlier. Transsion’s shipments, which were expanding from the Middle East and Africa markets to the Asian market, were 19.8 million units in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of 143% compared with a year ago, according to Omdia’s global smartphone shipment report. But its phone shipments, including Tecno, iTel and Infinix, totaled 15.4 million units in the first quarter of this year, a 22.4% drop. The decline in shipments in the first quarter was caused by the shortage of chips last year, not by the market demand, Omidia said. However, the company maintained its sixth place in terms of shipments and narrowed the gap in market share with Vivo, which is in the fifth place, to 2.8 percentage points. Transsion has kept its dominance in the African mobile phone market for years, even amid major economic disruption brought on by the pandemic, according to IDC. Transsion’s suite of brands (Tecno, Infinix, and Itel) had a commanding 48.2% share of the African smartphone market in 2020. Transsion Holdings went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in September 2019.(Liu Minxia) | 