Realme eyes fast growth as it unveils 1st 5G smartphone

Realme, a rapidly emerging Chinese smartphone brand, is targeting 100 percent year-on-year growth in shipments this year, as it steps up its own push to pounce at the opportunities of 5G handsets.

Li Bingzhong, founder and CEO of Realme, said the company has shipped 25 million units of smartphones in 2019, marking a 500 year-on-year growth.

"We are the fastest-growing smartphone brand, with our products available in 22 markets around the world," Li said.

On Tuesday, the company unveiled its first 5G smartphone Realme X50 5G in Beijing. Priced from 2,499 yuan ($360) in China, the model packs a quadruple rear camera setup, and it is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G chipset, which comes with eight cores and clocks at 2.4 GHz.

This year, all of Realme's products in China will support 5G connectivity, and the company will also launch a wide range of 5G smartphones that cover all price ranges, Li said.

Though Realme is still relatively new to the smartphone game, its meteoric rise has been raising eyebrows. It was created by employees from Chinese smartphone vendor Oppo in the middle of 2018 to take on rivals, including Xiaomi.

Now, as an independent brand, Realme is the fourth-largest smartphone vendor in India and the fifth-largest player in the Spanish smartphone market.