(Yicai Global) Dec. 13 -- China’s homegrown mobile phones are catching up in the high-end market with those made by US tech giant Apple, according to the chief operating officer of Vivo Communication Technology.

Chinese handset makers now see the high-end market as a new area for expansion because their technological capabilities have improved, Hu Baishan, who is also an executive vice president at Vivo, said in an interview with Yicai Global. They have even surpassed the iPhone in some ways, such as portrait and night photography, he added.

Hu mentioned Vivo’s latest X90 series as an example. The high-end phone with a quad camera array launched on Nov. 22. Sales have been triple that of the company’s previous generation mobile, Hu said, with those of the X90 Pro and X90 Pro Plus reaching four times those of the X80 Pro during the same period.

The X80 was a milestone for Dongguan-based Vivo, Hu said, as it laid the foundations for the company’s move toward the high-end segment and the firm’s plans to grow its market share. 

In this year’s second quarter, Vivo secured a 13 percent share of the global market for high-end handsets priced at more than CNY3,500 (USD500), second only to Apple and over double its level in the same period of last year, according to data from Counterpoint Research.

Boosted by the popularity of the X80 series, Vivo’s second-quarter shipments in the market for phones costing between USD600 and USD799 surged by 504 percent from a year ago, the data showed.  

Vivo’s impressive sales have come amid a downturn in shipments in the global smartphone market. In the third quarter, global shipments tallied 300 million units, down 12 percent annually to an eight-year low in terms of quarterly data. 

But the high-end segment has held up, with the average selling price reaching a record high in the second quarter. According to Counterpoint, second-quarter ASP in the global high-end smartphone market rose 8 percent from a year ago to USD780. 

Editors: Shi Yi, Tom Litting