In China, smartphone sales are breaking the jaws as rarely: how to explain it?

China has experienced a drop in smartphone sales not seen in 10 years, which confirms the current difficulties of a market (and a country) which is running out of steam.

The Chinese smartphone market is in crisis. In 2022, mobile sales plunged 13%, the biggest drop in a decade. Worse, China has not exceeded the famous threshold of 300 million smartphones delivered on its soil, for the first time since 2013. COVID-19 and the slowdown in the economy of the Middle Empire are the first reasons evoked by the experts to try to explain this brutal fall.

China’s ‘zero COVID’ policy has hit smartphone sales hard

A few days ago, we were talking to you here about the historic fall in smartphone sales (-18%!) on an international scale, and the second world power is largely contributing to the disenchantment of the market. In 2022, China sold 286 million smartphones, according to IDC. A year earlier, sales had indeed climbed to 329 million in the country.

China sees here the consequences of its drastic policy for managing COVID-19, marked by strict controls at first, then by the lifting of restrictions at the end of the year to revive consumption at all costs. And the riots around iPhone City didn’t help. Finally, the Chinese economy was heavily penalized, which changed the habits of its citizens.

” Strict pandemic control policy led to historically high household savings as consumer spending turned conservative “Explains an expert on the Chinese market to our colleagues at Reuters.

Apple suffering in China, Honor and vivo at the top

In the game of manufacturers, vivo is doing the best. With 18.6% market share, it is the one that sold the most smartphones in China last year. Yet its total sales plunged more than 25% year-on-year. Honor, sold by Huawei in 2020, for its part pulled out of the game in 2022 with a 34% increase in sales, ahead of Apple and OPPO, excuse me, who moreover are struggling for third place of the Chinese market.

The apple brand suffered more in China than in the rest of the world, where its deliveries fell on average by 15%. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Apple only sold 16.4 million mobiles in China, a fairly significant drop of 24% year on year. As we explained, the riots at the huge Foxconn factory that produces the majority of iPhones have weighed on sales, disrupting the supply chains of the American company. We end with the blow also suffered by Xiaomi, which saw its sales plunge by -37.3% in China during the last quarter.

Source : Reuters