AppleInsider Staff
Apple's iPhone continued to increase its share of the lucrative Chinese smartphone market during the three-month period ending in January, but growth rates reached a nadir not seen since 2014, according to the latest research from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
The research firm notes that while Apple's iOS was the most popular brand in China for the January quarter with a 25 percent marketshare, year-over-year growth rates slowed to their lowest levels since late-2014. A closer analysis of the numbers reveals consumers were likely waiting for Chinese New Year deals.
"Looking at the three months individually, January was the weakest month for Apple in China as more price-sensitive consumers might have been waiting to see what promotions Chinese New Year would bring in early February," said Carolina Milanesi, chief of research at Kantar.
Supporting the theory is Apple's worldwide marketshare, which remained relatively steady over the same period.
On a device basis, Apple owned the market with iPhone 6s, iPhone 6s Plus and iPhone 6 coming in as the top three best-selling smartphones. Second-place manufacturer Huawei took 24.3 percent of sales, while Xiaomi came in third after shedding 10.2 points year-over-year.
Overall, however, iOS is far behind Android's 73.9 percent marketshare. Google's operating system is consistently dominant in burgeoning markets, mostly thanks to a comparatively low licensing overhead that allows local OEMs to produce low-cost phones.
In January, Kantar put Apple's share of the Chinese smartphone market at 27.1 percent, with iPhone models taking the top three spots in per-device sales.
Beyond China, Apple is bracing for its first-ever iPhone sales decline since the popular smartphone launched in 2007. The company is modeling the sales contraction for the current March quarter, noting a tough compare to last year's unexpectedly high sales.
For the most recent quarter ending in December, Apple sold a record 74.8 million units and raked in $18.4 billion in profit on $75.9 billion in revenue.
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18 Comments
Nothing too shocking here. It underscores the need to have EXCITING new products - one or two that are game changers. Apple is more and more looking like the floundering efforts at Yahoo! Tossing a bunch of things at the wall and hope something really sticks.
Liquid metal button springs / Homekit / Healthkit / Apple Watch / declining iPad importance / the iTunes music / media mess / add you own____________________.
Billions wasted on useless buybacks / absurdly expensive spaceship buildings / non performing executives (Cook, Cue , Angela,________).
Cook is going to go down as the architect of Apple's developing lost decade from an investor perspective.
From Zero to a Billion in 6 seconds flat, and growth has stopped! DAMN!
When a company already owns close to 100% of the profits in the smartphone market worldwide, growth is not going to be explosive anymore. They've already sucked almost all the oxygen out of the room already.
Look at the trend line - what has happened since mid 2012 is ZERO capital appreciation. You are clearly the one with zero vision of what is happening.