Summary: China's rapidly expanding SUV market

Gasgoo.com (Shanghai) - Following China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2002, consumer demand for passenger automobiles dramatically increased. Automobile manufacturers quickly took notice of this, introducing a slew of new models geared towards Chinese consumers. Among them, Chinese buyers took an especially strong liking to SUVs, with their sales growth far surpassing the market average.

According to statistics compiled by Gasgoo.com (Chinese), total SUV sales in 2003 did not even meet 100,000 units. Just nine years later SUV sales exceeded 1.96 million units, nearly twenty times greater than 2003's figure.

From 2003 to 2012, SUV sales in China increased an average of 40 percent each year, with an average of over 100,000 units sold annually. Over the last decade, year-on-year sales growth rates in the SUV segment have generally surpassed the market average and have constantly remained in the double digits.

In 2003, SUVs constituted less than five percent of all passenger automobiles sold in China. That market share has grown consistently since 2003, with the segment accounting for nearly 15 percent of all Chinese passenger automobile sales in 2012.

Domestic own brand manufacturers were originally the dominant force in the Chinese SUV market. However, following the increasing number of foreign manufacturers in China, own brands' market share in the segment has decreased from 67.37 percent in 2003 to 44.2 percent in 2009, when their share were surpassed by that of foreign manufacturers'. As of 2012, own brand models made up 40.64 percent of total sales in the SUV segment.

Among foreign brands, Japanese manufacturers' performance was the most notable. Japanese manufacturers were credited with introducing the 'urban SUV' to China, which has been highly popular among the country's buyers. Ever since 2004, Japanese models made up one-quarter to one-third of all SUVs sold in the country, nearly surpassing own brands' share in 2009. Korean manufacturers followed their Japanese rivals, introducing a number of domestically produced SUVs. In 2012, Korean SUVs accounted for 14.71 percent of all units sold in the country. With the introduction of the Volkswagen Tiguan, German manufacturers also entered the SUV market. This one model accounted for 15.71 percent of all Chinese SUV sales in 2012.