The competition in China’s washing machine market goes on very hotly. Who will be the winner, domestic brands or foreign brands? 

Because of the prominent performance in developing new products, carrying out the stratagem and some other aspects, China’s domestic brands, represented by Haier, take the lead in China’s washing machine market. The sale of Haier takes 37.98% of the total volume, ranking NO.1 with absolute advantage. Yet the sales share of foreign brands, such as Samsung, Siemens, Whirlpool and the like decreases compared with the year of 2007.

Such statistics comes from the Analysis on the Retail Market of Washing machine in China’s Key Cities in the First Half of 2008 which is newly released by State Information Center (SIC). According to SIC’s survey and statistics on the whole country’s 375 key cities covering market of Grade 1 to Grade 4, the washing machine retail market in the key cities keeps relatively smooth growth rate in the first half year. The sale increases by 9.83% compared with the last year. The sales amount increases by 19.60%, 9.77 percentages higher than increase of sales. The effect of key manufacturers has got obvious increase.

Cai Ying, Chief of the Market Information Office in the Department of Information Resource Development of State Information Center said that Haier’s washing machine got the best market performance in the first half year. And by now Haier has been changed from scale enlargement to lean production. Its sales share increases to 37.98%, taking the first place with absolute advantage. Besides Haier, Littleswan and Royalstar are the other two China’s domestic brands which enter Top 10 of Market Sale.

However, the sales share of the washing machine of Siemens, Samsung and Whirlpool in the first half year is respectively 5.38%, 3.67% and 2.95%, with obvious decrease compared with last year.

Why did the three above-mentioned foreign brands get decrease in their market share? According to Cai Ying, Haier has made obvious improvement in the quality and function of the high-end washing machine after their technological cooperation with GE. The price of Haier’s high-end product is lower than foreign brands. And it has the advantage of good after-sale service. So in the first half year Haier has occupied much market share of foreign brands. Siemens and Whirlpool don’t put enough effort in the development of new products, and their new products come out slowly in the first half year, which results in the bad marketing ability. As for Samsung’s washing machine, Chinese customers do not consider it as high-end as Siemens. But its sales price is too high, making it hard for many customers to afford it.

Wu Jianke, General Marketing Manager of Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group China admitted that Siemens, which is specialized in the automatic roller washing machine, really suffered decrease in its market share in the first half year. The reason is that Siemens does not put as much devotion as the same period of the last year in the sales promotion of washing machine in the first half year. Meanwhile, the macro economic situation of the first half year is different from last year. So Siemens adopts the strategy of conservative management.

Simultaneously, from the survey data the journalist found that China’s domestic brands were in the inferior place in the field of automatic roller washing machine on the whole. And among the different kinds of washing machines of semi-automatic wave-wheel, automatic wave-wheel and automatic roller, the automatic roller washing machine increased sale of most sharply. According to the statistics from State Information Center, the first half year’s sale of automatic roller washing machine in the key cities increased by 26.89% compared with last year. The sales amount increased by 33.03%. Its increasing extent of the sale is 3 times of the automatic wave-wheel washing machine and 12 times of the semi-automatic roller washing machine. The automatic roller washing machine has entered a period of fast growth.

The sales proportion of automatic roller washing machine is nearly 20% and its proportion of sales amount is nearly 40%. It has become the most potential product in China’s washing machine market in the second half year and the year of 2009. However, in the field of the automatic roller washing machine with the largest increasing extent, the highest technical content and the best show of the product’s value, the market share of China’s domestic brands is much less than the foreign brands.