Chinese own brand manufacturers continue to lose market share in May

 "It is unavoidable that sales of own brand vehicles will exhibit a downward trend, [but] I hope they don't fall too quickly or too far behind," China Association of Automobile Manufacturers Secretary General Dong Yang was quoted as saying in a report appearing on Caijing today. According to the CAAM's most recent statistics, 520,000 own brand passenger automobiles were sold in May, growing 13.4 percent from the previous year. Although the year-on-year growth rate was one of the highest own brands had seen in recent times, it was still significantly behind the average growth rate of 22.6 percent.

Even more worrying was that own brands lost even more of their market share in May. Their combined share in the passenger automobile market last month was 40.3 percent, 0.5 percent less than April and a full 3.3 percent less than last May. Own brands have gradually been losing out to foreign competitors since February 2010, when their combined market share was a record 50.6 percent.

CAAM Deputy General Secretary Yao Jie explains, "own brands have continuously been stuck in a downward trend, [while] joint venture brands have continued to grow, with sales increases in the double digits." In particular, German brands have experienced sales growth of near 20 percent since the beginning of the year, while growth rates for Japanese brands are also above ten percent. One model case is Shanghai VW, whose sales exceeded 100,000 vehicles last month, representing year-on-year growth of 14 percent for the JV.

Mr. Dong has stated on multiple occasions that own brand models offer much more value for price than their foreign counterparts, and that Chinese consumers need to step up and offer their support. He has also called for own brands to band together and work together on new research and development projects.