Last week, Counterpoint Research released its report on China Smartphone Market for Q3 2021 stating that HONOR made a strong comeback. A few days from that, IDC’s report now paints a slightly different story.
According to IDC, the China Smartphone Market shipped 80.8 million units in the third quarter of 2021. Although the number seems big, the overall shipments actually dropped by 4.7% YoY.
As per the research firm, the decline in shipments was due to the rise in average unit price and lack of product innovation to pique interest among consumers. Counterpoint also noted the latter as a primary reason for the drop in sales, in addition to component shortages.
Just like Counterpoint, IDC also says that 5G handsets were quite popular in the last quarter. In fact, 5G smartphones accounted for 77% of the total shipments in China in Q3 2021.
However, unlike Counterpoint, IDC adds that 4G smartphones witnessed a growth in sales for the first time in the last two years. This was due to the new 4G-only HUAWEI phones and the continuous demand for entry-level 4G handsets.
Talking about brands, vivo led the market, followed by OPPO, HONOR, Xiaomi, and Apple respectively. As far as growth is concerned, Apple grew the most by 49.7% YoY due to the launch of the iPhone 13 series, which accounted for 40% of the company’s shipments.
On the other hand, Xiaomi witnessed the lowest growth of 0.1% due to supply constraints. The firm’s Redmi Note 10 series remained out of stock for a longer period of time. But thanks to the Xiaomi MIX 4 and the Redmi 9 series, the brand managed to stabilize its market share.
HONOR easily beat suffering Xiaomi to acquire the third position with the launch of the HONOR 50 series, HONOR X20 series, and HONOR Magic3 series. It was the second-largest growing brand with a 31.7% YoY growth.
Lastly, OPPO did not have any new models to improve its performance. It maintained second place with the OPPO Reno6 series and the OPPO A series. Whereas, vivo continued to dominate the market with the vivo X70 series and iQOO devices.
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