April 2024 News: According to a report released by market research agency Counterpoint Research, China's smartphone sales increased by 1.5% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, following a year-on-year increase of 6.6% in the fourth quarter of last year (ending a 10-quarter decline), achieving positive growth for the second consecutive quarter.
Huawei's sales in the first quarter surged 69.7% year-on-year, the fastest growth rate among the top six mobile phone manufacturers, and its market share jumped to 15.5%, jumping to fourth place.
At the end of August last year, the Mate 60 Pro was released "before it was released", followed by the Mate 60 Pro+, Mate X5, Mate 60, and Mate 60 RS Giant, helping it gain a huge share of the high-end market above $600. Last year, Huawei's device business achieved sales revenue of 251.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 17.3%, returning to the growth track after two years of decline.
Since the beginning of this year, Huawei has continued to "regain lost ground", and market news shows that as of March, the combined sales of the Mate 60 series and Mate X5 have exceeded 10 million units. On April 18th, Huawei suddenly launched the Pura70 series, with a total of four models and a starting price of 5499 yuan. This is the first product after the upgrade of the "P series", and it is also the first "P series" product after Huawei's return, some analysts believe that the Pura 70 series will continue the strength of the Mate 60 series, and if the production capacity problem is effectively solved, the annual sales will exceed 10 million units.
With the official return of Huawei's dual-flagship product strategy, other manufacturers faced huge challenges, and their performance in the first quarter was mixed. Honor and Xiaomi (including Redmi) performed well, with the former achieving 11.5% year-on-year growth in the first quarter, thanks to the hot sales of models such as the X50 and Play 40 and the expansion of their offline channels. The market share increased to 16.1%, rising to the second place.
The latter, on the other hand, leveraged its strength in both the high-end and mass markets, with sales growth of 8.6% year-on-year and a market share of 14.6% increased by 1 percentage point. Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, said bluntly: "The continued hot sales of the Xiaomi 14 series show that Xiaomi has achieved a major victory in its high-end strategy. ”
The answer is Apple, due to Huawei's "return of the king", coupled with vivo, honor, OPPO, Xiaomi and other domestic brands are also constantly impacting the high-end market, the iPhone performance in the first quarter is sluggish, sales fell by 19.1%, the worst performance since 2020; Market share shrank to 15.7 percent, falling from first to third, slightly higher than Huawei's 15.5 percent. This is
In March this year, Apple CEO Tim Cook visited China again and personally unveiled Apple's Shanghai Jing'an store, which is its 57th store in Greater China, the 8th store in Shanghai, and its largest flagship store in Asia and the second largest in the world, second only to the Fifth Avenue store in New York, with a total investment of more than 83.4 million yuan.
It is not difficult to see that Cook attaches great importance to the Chinese market, "For us, there is no more important supply chain in the world than China." "However, the lack of bright spots makes it difficult to stimulate consumer interest. It is reported that the two Pro versions of the iPhone 16 series will be equipped with the latest generation of A18 Pro chips, and artificial intelligence (AI) performance will be improved.
OPPO (including OnePlus) saw its sales plummet by 15.5%, its market share fell by 3.1 percentage points, and its ranking also dropped from second to fifth. It is reported that the green factory is fully betting on AI mobile phones, and has set up an independent AI center to concentrate all internal personnel related to AI business. The Find X7 series, which was launched in January this year, is equipped with OPPO's self-developed Andean large model, realizing the industry's first device-side 7 billion parameter model application, and taking the lead in the industry to realize AI call summarization, AI elimination and other functions.
Vivo (including iQOO) edged down 0.4% to regain the top spot with a 17.4% share. Blue Factory has also accelerated the layout of the field of AI mobile phones, launching the X100 series and X Fold3, which not only redefine the human-computer interaction mode of smartphones, but also comprehensively improve the user's digital life experience through the Blue Heart Small V (an intelligent assistant based on the self-developed "Blue Heart Model") and a series of AI auxiliary functions.
It is not difficult to see that the competition in China's smartphone market is becoming increasingly fierce, and the market share gap between the top six manufacturers in the first quarter is only 3%. With positive market growth expected this year, generative AI is another major innovation direction, and we will continue to watch who can seize the opportunity to stand out.