According to Counterpoint Research, China's smartphone sales in 2022 fell by as much as 14% year-on-year, reaching the lowest level in nearly a decade, while Apple's smartphone sales in China in 2022 fell by only 3% year-on-year, making it the second largest brand in China's smartphone market for the first time.
Specifically, in the Chinese smartphone market in 2022, vivo maintained the first place with a market share of 19.2%, while Apple surpassed OPPO and became the second in the market with 18% market share, OPPO ranked third with 17.5% market share, Honor surpassed Xiaomi to rank fourth with 16.7%, Xiaomi ranked fifth with 13.9% of the market, Huawei ranked sixth with 7.9%, and Realme ranked seventh with 2.4%.
In addition to Apple, the top five glory also performed relatively well, and was the only mobile phone manufacturer to achieve positive growth and a year-on-year increase of 38%, but this is mainly due to its low base in 2021. Domestic mobile phone manufacturers OPPO, vivo and Xiaomi will decline by 27%, 23% and 19% year-on-year respectively in 2022, and the decline is more obvious.
Counterpoint Research also mentioned that in the fourth quarter of 2022, Apple occupied 23.7% of the market share, maintaining the lead, but also experienced a double-digit year-on-year decline, Huawei with the release of the Mate 50 series, achieved a year-on-year growth of 15% in the fourth quarter, but considering its inability to launch 5G-enabled equipment, the sales outlook is more worrying.
Last year, Chinese smartphone manufacturers continued to make efforts in the high-end market, and successively launched folding screen mobile phones, it is expected that the competition of folding screen mobile phones will intensify in 2023, and will promote foldable mobile phones to overseas markets. Counterpoint Research concluded that although the general environment is improving, smartphone sales are not expected to grow explosively this year.