Our WSS (Smartphones) service predicts LeEco, a Chinese brand, will ship 25 million smartphones and become the eleventh largest vendor worldwide in 2016. LeEco is currently the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone player, due to cost-competitive hardware, improving distribution, and a growing ecosystem of media content.

We forecast LeEco to ship 25.0 million smartphones worldwide in 2016, rising an impressive +541% from 3.9 million in 2015. LeEco is currently the world’s fastest-growing major smartphone vendor, due to cost-competitive hardware, improving distribution, and a growing ecosystem of media content.

LeEco first entered the global smartphone market in 2015. Its Le 1S and Le 2 flagship smartphone models have proven wildly popular in China and formed the bedrock of its soaring worldwide growth. LeEco has expanded into India in 2016 and it is eyeing the United States as a next growth engine for its smartphones through 2017.

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. 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.

Clients can access the full report here.

Exhibit 1: Global Smartphone Shipments and Marketshare by Vendor in 2016  [1]