- Six workers tested positive at Oppo’s Greater Noida located manufacturing facility
- Construction workers at Vivo’s under-construction facility have also tested Corona positive
- The global smartphone market declined its fastest ever in Q1 2020
Oppo has shut its Noida-based manufacturing facility, days after it had resumed smartphone manufacturing operations at the same. Several reports doing the rounds of media websites indicate that no less than six workers working at the Oppo facility have tested positive of Corona virus.
The company’s manufacturing facility located in Kasna, Greater Noida, was shut last Sunday after the news of its workers catching Corona virus had broke out. Oppo, like Vivo, Oneplus, Iqoo and Realme, operated under the umbrella of China-headquartered BBK.
Coronavirus has changed buying dynamics
The coronavirus, as per Counterpoint Research, has changed buying dynamics, with share of online spiking over the past few months of 2020. According to Counterpoint Research’s US online channel tracker, the share of online handset sales in the US more than doubled from January to April. 16 per cent of all handsets sold in the US between January and February were traded online, which rose to 21% in March and soared to 33% in April, when the full-fledged impact of COVID-19 began
A similar, but less extreme pattern can also be seen in China. Share of online device sales reached 35 per cent, their highest ever in February during the height of the country’s pandemic.
This is very high compared to China’s average annual online sales share of 25 per cent, and the online share between November and the end of the year, when there is the largest e-commerce festival, Single’s Day, is about 28 per cent.
The global smartphone market declined its fastest ever, down 13 per cent YoY in Q1 2020, according to the latest research from Counterpoint’s Market Monitor service. This is the first time since Q1 2014, that the smartphone market has fallen below 300 million units in a quarter. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the signs of any recovery that the market started showing in Q4 2019.
