IDC: iPhone tops the Chinese market for the first time Last year, overall mobile phone shipments hit a 10-year low
Finance Associated Press, January 25 (edited by Huang Junzhi) According to reports, Apple's iPhone topped the Chinese market for the first time last year and became the best-selling smartphone. Despite the lowest shipments in China's smartphone market in nearly a decade in 2023 and fierce local competition, the iPhone's performance has been surprisingly strong.
According to the latest report from the International Data Corporation (IDC), in the fourth quarter of 2023, China's smartphone market shipped about 73.63 million units, a year-on-year increase of 1.2%, rebounding for the first time after 10 consecutive quarters of year-on-year decline. However, the shipment volume for the whole of 2023 will only be about 271 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 5.0%, the lowest in nearly 10 years.
IDC pointed out that although the overall market finally returned to growth trend at the end of the year, the market performance was still significantly lower than expected. In the first half of last year, affected by the economic environment and the continuation of the epidemic, the overall mobile phone market was still in a downturn, and in the second half of the year, with the improvement of the economic environment and the increase in the attention of all sectors of society to the mobile phone market, the market demand gradually improved and improved, but it has not yet been fully released.
According to IDC data, the current market demand mainly comes from high-end people in Tier 1-3 cities. Therefore, most of the better-selling products are concentrated in the flagship product series of various brands such as Apple iPhone 15, Huawei Mate 60, Xiaomi 14, and vivo X100.
Apple topped the list
Among the many mobile phone brands, Apple stood out for the first time, ranking first in the domestic market in terms of iPhone shipments in the fourth quarter and the whole year of 2023. Competition from domestic brands such as Huawei is intensifying, but timely discounts and promotions have helped reduce the damage to Apple, the report said.
Earlier, professionals, including strategists at US investment bank Jefferies, said that global iPhone sales fell sharply in the fourth quarter as enthusiasm for Apple's latest generation of hardware cooled in the world's largest smartphone market.
IDC wrote, "Although Apple has been significantly impacted by competing products in the domestic high-end market, coupled with the limited range of product upgrades that have led to a decline in attractiveness, it has attracted more consumer demand driven by relatively large price reductions and promotions on third-party channels." Although it no longer has obvious advantages over Android flagship products, the overall comprehensive product strength of the iPhone is still one of the best. ”
Arthur Gao, research analyst at IDC, also said: "Apple's rise to the top in 2023 marks a huge success, especially amid Huawei's re-competition and weak consumer sentiment. "Apple was able to do this thanks to its timely price promotions from third-party channels, which spurred demand. ”
In addition, IDC data shows that Xiaomi's success in the fourth quarter was mainly due to its smaller decline than its competitors. For the full year, Apple's 2.2% sales decline in 2023 was better than that of local rivals like Honor Device Co. and Vivo, both of which saw double-digit declines. Overall shipments were down 5%.
(Finance Associated Press Huang Junzhi)