We’ve seen so many advancements in the local smartphone market this year, in terms of both price and hardware. It’s really amazing how much the local brand landscape has changed in twelve months. Let’s look back at the trends that defined the local market this 2014 :

The octa-core wars

One of the biggest tech trends this year is the proliferation of affordable, bang for the buck octa-core smartphones. Spearheaded by Starmobile’s Diamond X1 in the beginning of the year, we’ve seen prices for octa-core smartphones steadily drop from 15k, 10k and now with the introduction of CloudFone’s 501o, down to sub 5k. We’ve also seen more local LTE powered smartphones hit the market, but until local LTE speeds increase, it seems that octa-core smartphones is the name of the game moving forward.

Sub 5K bang-for-the-buck smartphones

Another great market trend (and one that really made consumers happy) that hit this year was the introduction of truly bang-for-the-buck quadcore smartphones from manufacturers under 5K, first done by MyPhone and their Rio. Until then, getting a smartphone with a quadcore processor, 1GB of RAM and a 5-inch IPS display with 3G was nigh impossible. As with any free market, MyPhone’s competitors, namely Cherry Mobile and Starmobile upped their game, and introduced their own answers to the Rio, which culminated with Cherry Mobile offering the blockbuster Flare 3.

While local brands offering cutthroat pricing is the norm for us, we were really surprised to see that ASUS stepped up their game and offered the Zenfone 5 at the price that they did. Even now after a few months after it was launched, the Zenfone 5 is still one of the most sought after smartphones in the PH.

Xiaomi disrupting the local market

Xiaomi manages to shake the status quo in whatever market they launch in, and that’s the same story here in the PH. It’s amazing to see how much consumer sentiment changed when it comes to assessing the value of a smartphone or a device before and after Xiaomi entered the market – prices that were considered fair by some before the Chinese company set up shop were now treated as highway robbery after their first flash sale. Both international and local companies were forced to take action and offer better value to consumers, which in the long run, is a win-win for everyone. It’ll be exciting to see just how the company expands their operation in the Philippines moving forward.

As a side note, Xiaomi’s other rivals in China has also started offering their affordable, high end devices in the PH as well. We’ve seen Meizu’s MX4 enter the PH, as well as Huawei’s Honor series of devices, starting with the Honor 6. We’re hoping that Lenovo takes the hint and follows through with their affordable devices as well.

Smartphones under 2K

While ultra affordable smartphones are not as glamorous to talk about compared to flagship devices, they nevertheless give you a gauge of what the majority of the Philippine population is buying. This year we’ve seen prices for Android powered smartphones drop to as low as 1.5K, which was unheard of last year. Because of this smartphone penetration has increased sharply compared to last year – local brands that we talked to said that their phone sales, which was usually dominated by feature phones (60/40 split between feature phones and smartphones) were now evenly split (50/50) between the two.

Affordable Windows tablets and smartphones

One thing that we thought we would never see was Windows Phone on a locally branded device. That happened with Cherry Mobile’s Alpha Luxe and Style, and allowed people curious about the Windows Phone ecosystem to jump in without spending an arm and a leg to do so. While it’s not clear if the Microsoft – Cherry Mobile partnership resulted in better activations for the struggling OS, other companies may want to take the plunge for the sake of offering variety to a market that’s saturated with Android devices.

Cherry Mobile also jumped in the Windows tablet and notebook market with their Play and Morph Windows powered tablets, which proved to be a hit with students and office workers looking for an affordable workstation. While Cherry Mobile isn’t the first one to offer affordable Windows powered slates here in the PH, they are by far the company with the biggest marketing muscle and reach to do so. We wouldn’t be surprised if other companies jump in and start offering their own devices.

Think of any other trends that defined 2014? Share them in the comments below.