For the first time in a while, the top five smartphone brands in China are all local, with Apple falling to sixth place.
According to tech market analysts at Canalys, Apple’s market share in China dropped to 14 percent in Q2, just behind Xiaomi. A similar report from IDC shows that Apple’s market share decreased partly because of a 3.1 percent drop in annual shipments, while shipments of Android phones, including Chinese models, increased by 11.1 percent.
In contrast, the overall Chinese smartphone market grew by about nine to ten percent compared to Q2 of last year.
Apple was in first place in Q4 but dropped to third, fourth, or even fifth place in Q1, depending on the source. Canalys and IDC can’t agree on the exact rankings, but they both place Vivo in first and Xiaomi in fifth, with Huawei, Honor, and Oppo in the middle. Both reports show that Huawei’s year-on-year growth was significant, with Canalys reporting a 41 percent increase and IDC reporting a 50 percent increase.
Huawei’s high-end smartphones are competing strongly with Apple. “In the first half of the year, Huawei led the market despite US trade restrictions, closing the gap with Apple in the over $600 segment,” said Arthur Guo, a senior research analyst at IDC.
“Consumers in China are also keeping their devices longer,” added IDC analyst Jacob Zhu. “This trend pushed the market share of phones over $600 to nearly 26 percent in Q2 2024, up from around 23 percent in the same period last year.”
