While Chinese media are discussing the visit of Apple’s chief operating officer to the country, Canalys analysts are sharing an important revelation: in the second quarter, the brand’s share of the Chinese smartphone market fell by two percentage points, while rival Huawei’s smartphone sales soared by 41% year-on-year.
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The key driver for the growth in sales of Huawei products was the entry into the local market in April of the new flagship family of Pura 70 smartphones, according to Canalys experts. While iPhones accounted for 16% of smartphone sales in the Chinese market in the second quarter of last year, a year later their share dropped to 14%. As a result, Apple slipped from third place in the Chinese smartphone market to sixth. The authors of the report do not specify how the volume of shipments of Apple smartphones changed in the last quarter.
Overall, the Chinese smartphone market grew by 10% in the second quarter. At the top of the ranking were Vivo products with 19% of the market, Oppo was in second place with 16% of the market, Honor was third with 15% of the market, and Huawei was fourth with exactly the same share. In fact, the five largest smartphone suppliers to the Chinese market are local manufacturers for the first time.
Apple does not want to give up its position without a fight, and therefore is making efforts to optimize its supply channels. This spring, it began offering discounts on the latest iPhone models, which are unusual for the Chinese market. According to TechInsights forecasts, Huawei will deliver more than 50 million smartphones to the Chinese market by the end of this year, a fifth of which will be from the latest Pura 70 series. If this happens, Huawei will become the largest smartphone supplier in China, occupying 19% of the local market . Last year, the company’s share did not exceed 12%.