Huawei is the only real winner in China’s smartphone slump

Huawei enjoyed strong demand for its Mate 60 series, described as one of the only bright spots to the start of the year for the region – it’s sales were up a solid 64% for the first 6 weeks of the year.

Apple’s iPhone sales meanwhile dropped 24% for the period. Counterpoint’s Senior Analyst Mengmeng Zhang says this was due to a number of reasons, one of which being consumers were perhaps less than overwhelmed by the features of the latest version:

“Primarily, it faced stiff competition at the high end from a resurgent Huawei while getting squeezed in the middle on aggressive pricing from the likes of OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi. Although the iPhone 15 is a great device, it has no significant upgrades from the previous version, so consumers feel fine holding on to the older-generation iPhones for now.”

The report also notes the ‘underperformance’ of OPPO and Vivo also contributed to the 7% YoY slump.

On a wider point, the report notes that the numbers may be comparing unfavourably to the first six weeks of 2023 which saw ‘abnormally high numbers’ with significant unit sales being deferred from December 2022 due to production issues.

Senior Analyst Ivan Lam added: “Consumer confidence will need to rise to stabilize the market, but it is a tough call right now with everything that is happening, especially in the real estate sector. “As far as Apple is concerned, there is more wriggle room in the short term. This weekend’s aggressive promotions are just one example.”

In terms of forecasting, Counterpoint says overall growth is likely to remain in the red during Q1 2024 due to low consumer confidence and few new launches.

It was a similar macro picture in Japan, with a general slump in Q4 smartphone sales. However Google Pixel phones had a particularly good time of it clocking a massive 527% shipments growth figure compared with the year-ago quarter.