Chinese own brand manufacturers recover market share as overall market sales growth declines

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai October 18) - Although growth in the Chinese automobile market has stuttered yet again in September, Chinese own brand manufacturers saw their market share recover slightly.

According to a report appearing on cankaoxiaoxi.com, Chinese automobile market growth rates fell from 8 percent in August to 6.4 percent in September. This has been in part due to growth rates for the Chinese economy as a whole slowing down.

According to statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, passenger automobile sales in the country totaled 1.69 million units in September, only slightly higher than the 1.5 million units sold in August.

However, own brand manufacturers have been performing relatively stronger in the automobile market in September, with their sales growth rates higher than previous months. Their share in the passenger automobile market grew from 37.1 percent in August to 38.5 percent in September.

Of the remaining market share, 19.8 percent represented German brand sales, 14.9 percent Japanese brand sales, 13.6 percent American brand sales, 9 percent Korean brand sales and 3.9 percent Korean brand sales.

GM's sales grew 15.2 percent in September, with a total of 319,936 vehicles sold during the course of the month. It is the manufacturer's second best performance this year. Ford also performed strongly, with a total of 813,412 vehicles sold over the first three quarters of the year, representing year-on-year growth of 26 percent.