As one of the few Chinese consumer electronics giants with overseas markets as its core base, Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co.,Ltd. (688036.SH), known as the "King of African Phones," has knocked on the door of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange twice after seven years listed on the STAR Market, passing its listing hearing in late September and coming within a step of achieving a dual "A+H" listing.
Based on 2025 sales volumes, Transsion ranks first in global emerging markets with a 20.0% share, and holds 53.1% in Africa, more than all its competitors combined. As a wave of consumer electronics price hikes arrives, this company that rose through hardware going overseas is striving to shed the traditional label of a hardware maker and move toward becoming an intelligent ecosystem service provider for emerging markets.
Performance Swings: The "Ice and Fire" of Rising Prices and Falling Volumes
In Africa, one out of every two phones sold comes from a Chinese company. This company, Transsion Holdings, firmly holds the title of "King of African Phones" through its three brands TECNO, Infinix and itel.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, in 2025 Transsion ranked third in the global phone market by sales volume, with about 169 million units and an 11.8% share; it ranked eighth by revenue, with about US$8 billion and a 1.7% share. In emerging markets, the company ranked first by phone sales volume with a 20.0% share; in the African market it ranked first by sales volume with a 53.1% share.
The prospectus shows that Transsion's products cover a full lineup from low-priced feature phones to mid- to high-end smartphones. Relying on deep localization capabilities to take root in Africa, it continues to penetrate vast emerging markets such as South Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, and now sells to more than 100 countries and regions worldwide, with its overseas layout already achieving scale.
Notably, in response to the special usage environment of emerging markets, Transsion adapts its products at the detail level with features such as multi-SIM multi-standby, resistance to high temperatures and humidity, and optimized portrait shooting algorithms for darker skin tones, earning user trust through localized innovation and helping Transsion firmly defend regional market share over the long term.
The post-hearing information pack shows that from 2023 to 2025, Transsion Holdings generated revenue of RMB 62.295 billion, RMB 68.715 billion and RMB 65.591 billion, respectively. In the first four months of 2026, revenue was RMB 23.290 billion, up about 30.1% from RMB 17.908 billion in the same period a year earlier.
In terms of revenue structure, in 2025 its phone business revenue was RMB 58.448 billion, accounting for 89.1% of total revenue, of which smartphone revenue was RMB 54.821 billion; IoT products and other revenue was RMB 6.202 billion, with its share rising to 9.5%, and mobile internet services revenue was RMB 942 million. In the first four months of 2026, IoT products and other revenue rose to RMB 2.721 billion, accounting for 11.7%. Within 2025 phone revenue, TECNO, Infinix and itel accounted for 46.1%, 39.8% and 13.9%, respectively.
However, on the profit side, the recent wave of memory chip price increases has caused the company's profits to fluctuate sharply. From 2023 to 2025, Transsion Holdings' net profit fell from RMB 5.59 billion and RMB 5.60 billion to RMB 2.61 billion. This stems from the surge in demand for memory chips driven by AI large models, as suppliers shifted capacity toward higher-margin AI-related applications, tightening supply and driving up prices across the board for consumer-grade memory chips. Transmitted through the industry chain, the average purchase price of memory chips began to rise, from RMB 49.5 per unit in 2023 to RMB 67.8 in 2024 and RMB 70.3 in 2025, before soaring to RMB 192.0 in the first four months of 2026.
For Transsion, which focuses on value for money, this is a cost storm with nowhere to hide: smartphone gross margin fell from 22.5% in 2023 to 17.7% in 2025, and overall gross margin slid from 23.2% to 18.7%. The company was forced to slow shipments in the second half of 2025 and pass on costs through price increases, causing full-year smartphone sales to drop from 106 million units in 2024 to 96.81 million units.
To cope with cost pressure, Transsion Holdings chose to "walk on two legs" in 2026. First, it raised smartphone prices starting in 2026 to pass cost pressure downstream; second, it locked in low-cost inventory in the first half of 2026 and is still digesting previously stockpiled low-priced goods. Amid this maneuvering, the low cost of old inventory continued to contribute to profit, while the high cost of new purchases had not yet been transmitted to the income statement. Benefiting from this cost-side "lag," in the first four months of 2026 the company's revenue rebounded 30% year on year, gross margin rebounded to 21.9%, and net margin recovered to 5.8%.
Fierce Competition in Emerging Markets: How to Keep Leading?
In fact, looking again at Transsion Holdings' future from the current point in time, what matters more is structural upgrading. Among phones sold in Africa, smartphones rose from 31.1% in 2023 to 43.8% in 2025. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the emerging market phone market grew from US$142.9 billion in 2021 to US$175.5 billion in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 5.3%, and is expected to reach US$266.7 billion by 2030, with growth accelerating to 8.7%; over the same period, smartphone penetration in emerging markets is still climbing.
From this perspective, the transition from feature phones to smartphones is still only halfway through, meaning the room for replacement demand and higher average selling prices has not yet been exhausted. This is a track of "moderate overall growth and continuous structural upgrading," and Transsion is continuing to lead in emerging markets thanks to its first-mover advantage built up over many years.
On the flip side of the consumer electronics upgrade, competition in overseas markets is also intensifying. Domestic players such as Xiaomi, Honor and OPPO continue to increase investment in Africa and emerging markets, and some competitors are growing smartphone shipments in Africa significantly faster than Transsion. What was once a blue ocean has turned into a red ocean.
Therefore, Transsion Holdings needs to find new business growth points, and it is exploring how to extend into higher-value-added software, ecosystems and multi-category hardware. First, Transsion's answer is to "embrace AI," while opening up different growth paths based on its years of understanding of localized R&D and sales in emerging markets. The prospectus explicitly states that the net proceeds from this H-share offering will mainly be invested in AI and terminal technology R&D, global brand and channel expansion, and mobile internet and IoT ecosystem layout, with the remainder supplementing daily operating capital.
Investment in AI is placed first among the uses of proceeds, and it is also a keyword repeatedly emphasized in its prospectus and recent annual reports. But unlike the large-model route of leading domestic phone makers, Transsion's AI R&D focuses more on on-device small models, multilingual localized AI assistants, voice noise reduction, visual recognition and other application scenarios that fit the needs of emerging market users. It develops adaptations for multilingual, multicultural overseas markets, striving to embed AI capabilities across phones and all categories of IoT terminals, enhance the differentiated competitiveness of hardware products, and break out of the involution trap of merely competing on hardware specifications and price.
The second is global channel and brand upgrading. In the past, Transsion's advantages were concentrated in the mass downmarket, with itel focusing on extreme value for money while TECNO and Infinix gradually probed upward into the mid- to high-end. But in emerging markets outside Africa, brand awareness still has room to improve. The fundraising will be used to improve offline distribution outlets and carry out localized brand marketing, seeking to change the outside impression that Transsion "only makes low-priced phones" and further raise the growth ceiling in South Asia and Latin America.
The third major direction is the mobile internet and IoT ecosystem. At present, the IoT segment already covers TWS earphones, smart watches, tablets, home appliances and even light mobility products, among which TWS earphones have already achieved the top spot by sales in the African market. The mobile internet business relies on its self-developed TranssionOS and monetizes through app distribution, pre-installation and advertising traffic. How to leverage hundreds of millions of existing terminal devices to convert hardware users into internet service revenue sources and build a second growth curve will also become a core proposition for Transsion Holdings' future.
Overall, Transsion Holdings presents a relatively clear "one body, two sides." Side A is its market-validated strong overseas localization capability, a solid emerging market base, and a huge terminal user base, providing the foundation for ecosystem transformation; Side B is pressure on profitability in its core hardware business, new businesses still in cultivation, and increasingly fierce external competition. The A+H listing may be only the starting point of its transformation.