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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Counterpoint Research has released its report on China Smartphone Market for Q3 2021. According to the firm, sales dropped by 9% YoY but increased by 3% QoQ. It is worth noting that the second quarter of 2021 witnessed the lowest Q2 sales since 2012. Hence, the QoQ improvement in the last quarter is negligible.

In Q2, the sales of smartphones in China plummeted as the competition could not fill the void left by HUAWEI. Whereas, in Q3, the lack of new features did not create enough demand for smartphones. At the same time, the industry went through component shortages.

Talking about bands, vivo continued to lead the market with a 23% market share, closely followed by OPPO with a 20% market share. As HONOR made a strong comeback with multiple products, it easily beat Xiaomi to take over the third position with a 15% market share.

India’s largest smartphone brand slipped to fourth place with a 14% market share in its home country. Apple, HUAWEI, and realme completed the chart with 13%, 8%, and 4% market shares respectively.

Unsurprisingly, HONOR was the fastest-growing smartphone brand in China in Q3 2021. Its market share almost doubled from 7.7% in Q2 2021 to 14.7% in Q3 2021 as the company’s sales grew 96% QoQ. It was expected as the brand is not only favored by the locals but over 30 distributors and retailers are its investors.

The HONOR 50 series and HONOR 20 were one of the top-sellers in the country last quarter. The HONOR Magic3 series, on the other hand, is not expected to be a major sales contributor even in the future.

HONOR’s biggest competitor will continue to be Xiaomi as both brands have a huge presence online. It will be interesting to see how these companies with stack up against each other in the coming quarters.

As far as the new market leaders are concerned, vivo and OPPO grew 21% YoY and 26% YoY respectively. However, their best-selling models were sub-$500 handsets like vivo S10, vivo S10 Pro, vivo Y31s, vivo Y52s, OPPO Reno6, OPPO A55, and OPPO A93.

Other Chinese OEMs are still struggling to make a name for themselves in the premium segment after the downfall of HUAWEI. Hence, Apple iPhones are currently the only most-preferred high-end smartphones by consumers in China.

Last but not least, 5G smartphone sales accounted for 79% of the total smartphones sales in China in Q3 2021. HONOR 20 and Redmi 9A were the only 4G-enabled devices in the top 10 best-selling smartphones list. Lack of 4G chips contributed to the increase in 5G phone sales but they also played a key role in an overall sales decline.

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