Apple sales bounce back in China as Huawei loses smartphone crown – TechCrunch

Huawei’s smartphone competitors in China are quickly splitting up the market share they lost over the past year.

According to the market research company, 92.4 million smartphones were shipped in China in the first quarter, with Vivo taking the crown with a share of 23% and its sister company Oppo just behind with 22% channels. Huawei, whose smartphone sales suffered a blow after US sanctions that cut critical chip parts from its supply chain, took third place with 16%. Xiaomi and Apple took fourth and fifth place respectively.

All major smartphone brands except Huawei saw their market share increase in China from the first quarter of 2020. Apple’s net sales in Greater China in the three months ended March nearly doubled year over year to $ 17.7 billion, a quarter of the all-time record for the American giant after its latest financial results.

“We were particularly pleased about the customer response in China for the iPhone 12 family.”
said Tim Cook during a call for earnings this week. “You have to keep in mind that China entered the shutdown phase earlier than other countries in the second quarter of last year. As a result, they were relatively harder hit this quarter and this needs to be taken into account when looking at the results. “

Huawei’s share shrunk from a dominant 41% to 16% within a year, despite the fact that the telecommunications equipment giant had succeeded increase the profit margin partly thanks to reduced costs. In November, it sold its budget phone line, Honor.

This quarter is also the first time in four years that China’s smartphone market has grown at a rate of 27%, according to Canalys.

“Leading vendors are racing to the top of the market and there has been an unusually high number of smartphone launches this quarter compared to Q1 2020 or even Q4 2020,” said Amber Liu, analyst at Canalys.

“Huawei’s sanctions and the sale of Honor were hallmarks of this new market growth as consumers and channels become more open to alternative brands.”