Realme entering Apple-Samsung zone with first high-end smartphone

Realme, the Chinese smartphone maker best known for its mass market brands, is breaking tradition by launching its first high-end smartphone next week in the overseas market. The GT 2 and GT 2 Pro models will be rolled out on Monday, February 28, at the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC) exhibition in Barcelona, Spain.

The GT 2 will be priced at around $600 and the GT 2 Pro at around $800. Smartphone enthusiasts are eagerly waiting to see the charging facility in the GT 2 series, which is said to be superfast. The 125W charger it comes with is said to be about 10 times more powerful than the iPhone 13’s MagSafe charger. A 10-minute charge of a GT 2 model is claimed to last an entire day.

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This will mark Realme’s first appearance at MWC, billed as the world’s biggest mobile trade conference. It will also push the four-year-old company into the league of Apple and Samsung, the global leaders in the high-end mobile segment. The launch will further pit Realme against its domestic rival Xiaomi, which has been rapidly gaining share in non-Chinese markets.

Rapid growth

Despite being a new entrant, the company has been growing rapidly. In the fourth quarter of 2021, it shipped 20.65 million smartphones, an increase of 48% from the previous-year period. Over the same period, Samsung grew just 8 per cent while Apple saw shipments shrink.

Realme, which currently enjoys just a 6 per cent share of the global market, expects to expand it in the coming quarters, particularly in Europe. In India, it is already the second-largest smartphone maker. Its biggest challenge is breaking into the high-end market, where Samsung and Apple are highly established players, said industry experts.