Stephen Silver
Smartphone shipments in China are continuing to drop year-over-year. Not only is Apple holding on to estimated sales volume in the country, but the iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus are both on the list of top five smartphones sold in the country.
According to statistics released Tuesday by Counterpoint Research's Market Monitor service, smartphone shipments in China once again declined in the second quarter. The continuing decline was attributed to consumers keeping their older models rather than buying new ones.
"The Chinese smartphone market has been declining YoY since Q3 2017. This is the first time that any large smartphone market has seen this kind of correction with four consecutive quarters of decline," James Yan, Research Director at Counterpoint Research, said as part of the release. "This is mainly because, consumers have been holding onto their smartphones for a longer period as the incentive to upgrade and perceived differentiation for the new launches has so far failed to convert some of the consumers to upgrade."
Huawei, helped by the growth of its sub brand Honor, was the only manufacturer to post year-over-year growth. Huawei now has 26 percent of market share, followed by Oppo with 19 percent, Vivo with 18 percent, Xiaomi with 13 percent and Apple with 9 percent.
Apple's China share
Apple's growth is flat year over year, although it gained a point of market share because of the contraction. In terms of individual models, the iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus ranked third and fourth, each with about three percent of the market.
"During the quarter, share of online sales for Apple grew both sequentially and annually due to comparatively higher discounts available on online as compared to offline channels," Flora Tang, Counterpoint's research analyst, said in the note. "E-commerce is now a key part of Apple's channel strategy in China, contributing to almost a third of its total sales in China. Riding on the trend it was the third largest brand in terms of sales volume during the 618 festival. iPhone X and iPhone 8 Plus surprisingly remained one of the popular and top selling models in China during Q2 2018"
The Samsung factor
Not showing up in the market share rankings is Samsung. The sluggish sales of the company's current generation of devices has begun to lose ground to various Chinese competitors, which was a major factor in Samsung's net income for the most recent quarter falling short of estimates.
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8 Comments
Cant’ wait for today’s financial report to be followed by gloom and doom, disappointment, hand wringing from the usual suspects in AI forums. Samsung’s S9 is a flop and their earnings disappointed but, hey, they get a pass from Wall Street.
People should not think of all mobile handsets sold in China as "smartphones". With an ASP bouncing around $200, these are glorified feature phones. They appeal to FEATURE phone users because of the display, ease of use (vs classic button activated feature phones) and a selling price not unlike that of a feature phone.
Buyers of these handsets have no need for the advanced features of true smartphones, ergo they hold onto them for much longer than true smartphone owners do.
This is why I wish the research firms would break sales into two categories: those selling for more than $400, and those selling for less than $400. In the above $400 segment Apple has no peers and nearly all of the entire industry's profits.
I'll be satisfied if Apple stock doesn't drop like Facebook did. I have no hopes of Apple doing as well as Alphabet and Amazon when it comes to beating earnings. At least I'll still be getting my dividends and it will be easier for Apple to buy back shares if there is a slight drop in Apple's share price. I have to look at the positive side of it. It will be OK to see Apple holding steady in a weak quarter. Apple continues to depend upon iPhone sales in a saturated smartphone market, so that's Apple's weakness. Apple needs to widen its revenue base but it needs more products or services to do that. Anyway, best of luck to fellow Apple shareholders.
Today, some articles were mentioning if Apple had a good quarter it would be a lot closer to that elusive $1T mark, but I'm fairly certain that won't happen. $938B is a long way from $1T considering how Apple stock has been doing as of late.