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Samsung’s manufacturing retreat from China leaves room for outsourcing provider Wingtech to grow
- Shanghai-listed Wingtech is focused on producing low-cost smartphones
- The company plans to help brands introduce cheaper 5G handsets from the second half of next year
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Li Taoin Shenzhen
Samsung Electronics’ closure of its last mobile phone factory in China this year marked the South Korean company’s precipitous fall in the world’s biggest smartphone market.
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But that move also signalled the parallel rise of a Chinese hi-tech company that is little known outside the tight circle of original design manufacturers (ODMs) based in the country.
Wingtech Technology, founded in 2006 by former engineer Zhang Xuezheng, has grown from its beginnings in Jiaxing, a city in eastern Zhejiang province famous for its rice dumplings, to become the world’s largest ODM for smartphones.
The company has been identified as one of the Chinese ODMs that Samsung has contracted to assemble its lower and mid-range Galaxy A-series smartphone models, according to sources cited in a Reuters report on Monday.
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Industry analysis firm Counterpoint cited the South Korean company’s orders as one of the reasons Wingtech’s share of the global ODM market rose to 28 per cent – a 23 per cent year-on-year increase – in the first half of 2019.
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