Discounts didn’t help: Apple, Xiaomi and Honor faced a decline in sales during the November sales in China

The analogue of the Western “Black Friday” in China is “Singles Day” on November 11, to which local trading platforms try to coincide with sales of a wide variety of goods, including smartphones. As Counterpoint Research analysts found out, this year, during two weeks of sales in China, 9% fewer smartphones were sold than last year.

Image Source: Apple

The study took into account smartphone sales statistics in China for the period from October 30 to November 12, 2023, as well as from October 28 to November 10, 2024. If before the beginning of this period, smartphone sales in China slightly exceeded last year’s figures, then after two weeks of sales the results were 9% worse. It is noteworthy that Apple products in the Chinese market this year have dropped by a certain double-digit percentage; the authors of the study do not provide the exact change.

Apple’s competitors are fully armed for the sales season. Huawei managed to increase smartphone sales by 7% compared to last year, largely thanks to generous discounts on the Pura 70 and Mate 60 series, as well as the release of the Nova 13 series based on Kirin processors with support for 5G networks. The Oppo brand, in combination with OnePlus, increased smartphone sales by 6%, largely due to relatively affordable models, as is the case with Vivo, which increased smartphone sales by 5% year-on-year.

Following the fall sales in China, Xiaomi had to face a 6% decline in smartphone sales. Only the Xiaomi 15 series looked like a “ray of light in the dark kingdom.” The Honor brand showed a decrease of 15%. The new family of Magic 7 smartphones simply did not have time to hit the market by the time the sales ended. One way or another, in the sales structure of Apple smartphones, the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max models, presented in September, were in greatest demand.