Sales of American smartphone giant Apple plunged nearly 50% in China as the iPhone-maker faced increasing competition from domestic players — most notably, Huawei — according to a report by Fortune India.
Apple’s shipments sank to 1.89 million units, down from 3.75 million one year ago, translating to a 49.6% drop in sales, the Forbes report said, citing data from think-tank China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
Foreign-branded smartphones now account for just 8% of China’s smartphone market — the largest in the world, the report added. That is half of their 16% share a year ago.
Meanwhile, US-sanctioned smartphone maker Huawei, which, for years, had been teetering on the edge of collapse, managed to regain its dominant position in the market, accounting for more than 19% of its share. That’s an outcome that analysts had been predicting since last year, on the back of Huawei launching its Mate 60 and Mate 70 smartphone series.
Sales of those devices had been so strong that they managed to spark a turnaround in the Chinese smartphone market in 2023 after several quarters of slowdown.
Huawei’s role in developing China’s first homegrown advanced semiconductor, with state-backed chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has played a key role in charting the smartphone maker’s return to the market. That breakthrough sparked huge patriotic backing for the tech giant from Chinese consumers, which has also fuelled the fall in Apple’s market share in China.
Meanwhile, Apple’s inability so far to roll out its AI services in China has also hit demand for its phones in the country.