The iPad is selling less and less well in China, a market considered essential by Apple. The iPhone also experienced a sharp drop in sales. On the contrary, Huawei is showing brilliant form.
Apple has struggled to renew interest in the iPad in recent years. The firm is counting on its new iPad Pro M4 and the two-size version of the iPad Air to once again arouse consumer desire, but we will have to wait for the first studies to know if this bet is a winner. In the meantime, Apple is losing market share in a very important territory: China.
According to figures from International Data Corporation (IDC), Apple is no longer the leader in the tablet market in China. Its sales there fell by 10.4% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the same period last year. What’s worrying is that the tablet industry in general has done well during this time, showing growth of 6.6% (6.3% for B2B and 10.7% for B2C ). As a result, Apple loses more than 10 points of market share between the first quarter of 2023 and that of 2024 (from 34.9 to 24.4%).
Huawei sells more tablets than Apple’s iPad in China
The manufacturer that benefits the most is Huawei. Struggling internationally, the brand continues to be a hit in its domestic market. Huawei becomes the new tablet leader in China with more than a third of sales (36.3%), an increase of 10.6% year on year.
Huawei has cannibalized this renewed Chinese demand for tablets, leaving only crumbs for others. Xiaomi completes the podium with 12.8% market share (compared to 10.1% in Q1 2023). Above all, the Xiaomi Pad 6S Pro allows it to settle in a mid/high-end niche, where the margins are greater. The Top 5 is completed by Honor (8.5% market share) and Lenovo (4.7% market share) respectively.
In any case, these figures confirm a trend: as important as it is, the Chinese market is increasingly resistant to Apple. We had already seen this with the data concerning smartphone deliveries in this country. iPhone sales are collapsing in China this year, once again benefiting Huawei. The latter is progressing at great speed despite American sanctions against it, which prevent it from using Western technologies.
Source: IDC