Transsion Holdings, a Chinese cellphone manufacturer that dominates Afria for years, has a fairly bleak year in 2025 based on its recently released its annual performance forecast.  

Based on preliminary calculations by the Shenzhen-listed company's finance department, Transsion Holdings expected 2025 revenue to fall about 4.58% year on year to RMB 65.568 billion while its net profit attributable to shareholders are expected to drop 54.11% year on year to RMB 2.546 billion. Its net profit after excluding non-recurring items was also set to plunge 58.06% to RMB 1.904 billion.

It is worth noting that the third-quarter report showed that in the third quarter of last year, Transsion Holdings’ results had staged a modest rebound. At the time, quarterly revenue rose 22.60%; the pace of decline in net profit attributable to shareholders also slowed markedly to 11.06%; and net profit after excluding non-recurring items even inched up by 1.65%.

However, this brief uptick proved as fleeting as a flash in the pan. Based on inferences from the performance forecast disclosed this time, Transsion Holdings’ performance deteriorated again in the fourth quarter of last year, dragging down the full-year results overall.

In response, Transsion attributed the simultaneous declines in last year’s revenue and profit to two factors: first, a sharp surge in prices of components such as memory, which weighed on product costs and gross margin; and second, increases during the period in selling expenses and R&D investment.

On January 30, the day after the performance forecast was released, Transsion Holdings closed at RMB 58.13 per share, down 3.93% from the previous trading day, with a latest market capitalization of about RMB 66.9 billion. Compared with its high over the past year, Transsion Holdings’ share price has now almost been cut in half.

Rising memory prices hit the “King of Africa"

Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co., Ltd., founded in 2013, is a provider of smart terminal products and mobile internet services focused on emerging markets.

Unlike domestic peers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, and vivo—which have huge user bases in China’s home market—Transsion Holdings has placed its strategic focus on overseas markets such as Africa, which is why it has been dubbed the “King of Africa.”

According to IDC data cited in Transsion Holdings’ 2025 semiannual report, in the first half of last year, the company held a 12.5% share of the global mobile phone market, ranking third among global handset brands; within the global smartphone market, it held a 7.9% share, ranking sixth.

Looking at specific regional markets, Transsion leads the pack in Africa’s smartphone market, ranking No. 1 by share; in South Asia, Transsion also ranked first in smartphone market share in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and it held the No. 8 spot in India’s smartphone market.

According to its 2024 annual report, in 2024 Transsion shipped about 200 million handsets for the year, with the mobile-phone business generating roughly RMB 63.2 billion in revenue and posting a gross margin of 20.62% for the segment.

By a rough estimate, each phone sold last year brought Transsion about RMB 300 in revenue on average. This suggests that Transsion’s product mix is still dominated by low- to mid-priced models.

However, the ongoing rise in prices for components such as memory has undoubtedly delivered a significant hit to Transsion’s performance and added considerable pressure. Based on preliminary calculations by its finance department, Transsion Holdings expected last year’s revenue to fall 4.58% to RMB 65.568 billion, while net profit attributable to shareholders was expected to plunge 54.11% to RMB 2.546 billion.

From the trend lines of the NAND (flash) index and the DRAM (memory) index, it is clear that since the second half of last year, prices for memory components have been climbing sharply. Now, in less than half a year, their costs have already multiplied severalfold.

In the view of research firms, compared with high-end models, rising memory costs have a more direct impact on low- and mid-range products such as RMB 1,000-class phones. With limited pricing power and thin profit buffers, a higher share of core component costs—such as memory—in a handset’s overall bill of materials quickly eats into manufacturers’ profitability.

In an industry report released at the end of last year, UBS estimated that by the fourth quarter of 2026, memory costs as a share of the BOM (bill of materials) for low- and mid-range smartphones were expected to rise to 34%, significantly higher than 22% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and 27% in the fourth quarter of 2025.

The memory cost per handset was expected to increase by about US$16 year on year, a jump of 37%. This incremental cost is equivalent to roughly 6% of the average selling price of low- and mid-range phones—an impact notably greater than the roughly 2% cost hit for high-end phones.

Transsion’s “Comfort Zone” No Longer Comfortable

A look at the shifts in NAND and DRAM indices makes it easy to see that Transsion’s performance in the fourth quarter of last year was significantly affected by fluctuations in the prices of memory components. And the lackluster results in the first three quarters of last year may well point to other, deeper reasons.

In the first half of last year, Transsion Holdings’ revenue fell 15.86% year on year to RMB 29.077 billion, while net profit attributable to shareholders plunged 57.48% year on year to RMB 1.213 billion.

At the time, in response to this report card showing declines in both revenue and net profit, Transsion Holdings said the main reasons were a combination of factors—including product launch timing, market competition, and supply-chain costs—which led to lower revenue and gross profit.

Some observers argue that Transsion’s product cadence may be an experience-based playbook distilled from years of hard-fought expansion in overseas markets. But with “involution” intensifying in China’s smartphone market and many of the most aggressive “price-war kings” setting sail abroad, that playbook may no longer fit the new market environment.

Looking back at Transsion’s trajectory—from Zhu Zhaojiang leaving Bird in 2006 to later leading a fledgling brand onto the African continent—the increasingly mature domestic supply-chain system became Transsion’s solid backbone.

After gaining a deep understanding of African consumers’ needs, Zhu cleverly transplanted China’s mature smartphone-market tactics to Africa—an unmistakable “dimensionality reduction strike” at the time—helping Transsion quickly establish a foothold across the continent.

However, during the years Transsion has “ruled the roost” in Africa, China’s smartphone market has pushed “involution” to new extremes. In just a little over a decade, quite a few handset brands have gradually vanished from public view amid brutal competition.

In recent years, China’s smartphone market has become increasingly saturated, with even signs of contraction in overall scale. Data from CAICT show that in 2025, smartphone shipments in China totaled 307 million units, down 2.4% year on year.

At the beginning of this year, Xiaomi partner and president Lu Weibing was even more blunt: “China is the most fiercely competitive market in the world. Any lead is razor-thin, and the situation is extremely intense.”

With growth in China’s smartphone market hitting a hard ceiling, domestic handset makers have been turning their attention overseas—actively expanding their global businesses—and some have already achieved notable results. This inevitably poses a degree of “threat” to Transsion’s once-solid “comfort zone.”

At the China–Africa Entrepreneurs Conference in September 2024, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun publicly stated that Xiaomi would step up its investment in the African market.

According to Caijing Tianxia in March last year, a source familiar with the matter said Xiaomi had set up an internal strategy team specifically to take on Transsion.

The latest report from market research firm Omdia showed that in Q3 2025, smartphone shipments in Africa rose 24% year on year, delivering the first double-digit growth since 2022.

By brand, Transsion led with a 51% market share, growing 25%. Samsung came as the second. Xiaomi and Honor ranked third and fifth, respectively, but posted rapid growth of 34% and 158%.

Transsion responds actively to challenges

After feeling the competitive pressure from domestic industry giants such as Xiaomi, Transsion has also been actively seeking change. The company has been looking to adjust its product mix and push hard into the mid-to-high-end segment.

In its interim report released last year, Transsion made it clear that it would continue to be guided by user value, prioritize mid-to-high-end experiences, strengthen product reputation, and keep increasing investment in mid-to-high-end offerings and R&D resources—sharpening its selection of value propositions for mid-to-high-end products.

At the same time, Transsion said it was actively exploring new technologies, new business formats, and new models—using AI to empower smarter everyday living for users, achieving fresh breakthroughs in innovation around applications of new hardware materials, further deepening joint development and strategic cooperation with upstream and downstream industry partners as well as universities and research institutions, and striving to lead in localized scenario-based experiences.

At an earnings briefing at the end of December, Transsion Holdings emphasized that it would continue technological innovation and improve end-user device experiences and product competitiveness. The company said it would increase R&D resource投入, focusing on building product value propositions in areas such as imaging, AI, charging, and core user experience, to enhance the competitiveness of its mid-to-high-end products.

However, in the 2025 earnings pre-announcement released this time, Transsion stated plainly that “to respond to market competition, enhance the company’s brand image, and maintain the company’s long-term core competitiveness, sales expenses and R&D investment increased during the reporting period.”

So far, Transsion has not disclosed the specifics of its full-year R&D spending for last year.

However, judging from the previously disclosed data in its third-quarter report, in the first three quarters of last year, while Transsion’s net profit attributable to shareholders fell by about 45% year on year, its R&D spending bucked the trend and rose 17.26% to RMB 2.139 billion. Its R&D expense ratio also increased by 0.76 percentage points to 4.32%.

This increase in R&D investment has been reflected to some extent in Transsion’s product roadmap. In recent years, the company has successively launched multiple mass-produced foldable smartphones, as well as several tri-fold concept phones.

However, during an earnings call in August last year, Transsion Holdings acknowledged that overall, foldables currently account for only a small share of the company’s shipments.

In the view of Canalys analyst Zhong Xiaolei, Transsion’s launch of tri-fold concept phones is not aimed at sales volume, but rather at “showing its muscles” to expand brand headroom and move upmarket—seeking to shake off its low-end label.

At CES 2026, the consumer electronics show held early this year, Transsion’s brand Infinix officially unveiled the NOTE 60 series of smartphones.

It is reported that the phone’s headline selling point is that it is “the world’s first smartphone to support satellite calling.” It also debuts four major innovations: the HydroFlow liquid-cooling system, a piezoelectric vibration fan, a photochromic back cover, and a magnetic expansion module—drawing significant attention across the industry.

In the currently red-hot AI space, Transsion has also been actively involved. Leida Finance noted that as early as March 2024, Transsion rolled out TECNO AIOS, aiming to comprehensively enhance users’ AI experience.

According to Transsion, the AI features in TECNO AIOS are integrated into mobile devices through third-party partnerships with Google, MediaTek, and others, providing users with generative AI capabilities.

At an earnings briefing in late October 2024, Transsion Holdings said that since September, its brands had released multiple phones equipped with AI features. For example, the PHANTOM V Fold2 5G comes with the new TECNO AI and a suite of AI functions including real-time call translation, AI wallpapers, AI image erasure, AI cutouts, and converting recordings into notes.

In September that year, Transsion also partnered with MediaTek to establish a joint AI laboratory. The two sides will integrate their strengths and technical resources in AI to accelerate the application and adoption of AI technologies in smart terminals.

Early last year, Alibaba Cloud announced via its official WeChat account that Transsion Holdings had reached a cooperation agreement with it. Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen large model has already been built into the AI phone PHANTOM V Fold2 launched by Transsion’s tech brand TECNO, creating a deeply localized, “practical AI” experience.

By the end of last year, a report by Jiemian News said that ByteDance was moving forward with partnerships with hardware makers such as vivo, Lenovo, and Transsion to develop AI phones, pre-installing AIGC plug-ins on their devices.

At a critical moment when performance was under tremendous pressure, can Transsion steady its title as the “king of Africa” by continuing to ramp up R&D investment and making timely strategic adjustments in response to market changes? Radar Finance will continue to follow the story.