Shipments of iPhones and other imported smartphones to China fell by 21% in January

In the Chinese market, consumers are increasingly looking at products from local brands, and in this sense, Apple is having a hard time, since it is the largest foreign player in China. Products from other foreign smartphone manufacturers are poorly represented in China, so the 21% drop in shipments in January primarily hit Apple.

Image Source: Apple

The decrease in the number of smartphones of foreign brands delivered in January from 5.542 to 4.398 million units in a year-on-year comparison, as noted by Reuters, became known at the beginning of this week following the publication of a report by CAICT, a Chinese organization that maintains such statistics. The decrease in a year-on-year comparison, therefore, amounted to 21%. The popularity of Apple products, as noted earlier, was negatively affected by the lack of support for localized Apple Intelligence functions by representatives of the latest iPhone 16 line.

The Chinese smartphone market as a whole did not show positive dynamics in January, but the decline in deliveries was at least limited to 14.3% to 27.24 million units. That is, the demand for products of Chinese brands did not decrease as rapidly as in the case of imported ones. The latter definition applies to Apple products very conditionally, since the company’s partners continue to assemble a significant portion of iPhones in China. In this sense, it is more appropriate to talk about the origin of the brand itself, rather than the place where the smartphone is assembled.