What an incredibly tight contest!
The latest annual difference between Apple and Xiaomi stands at a little over four percentage points as far as Chinese market share is concerned, which may not sound very small… until you realize that we’re talking about the nation’s gold medalist and fifth largest vendor as of the end of last year.
Naturally, the gap between Apple and silver and bronze medalists Honor and Oppo is way smaller, at 0.2 and 0.6 percent respectively, while Vivo follows extremely close behind in fourth place as well. But iPhones are for the first time in history the most popular types of smartphones in China, and that’s clearly an absolutely mind-blowing achievement made that much more impressive by the fact that all four of those other top brands are domestic to the world’s most populous country.
What’s on the (Chinese) horizon?
It’s equally important to point out that the region went through ten (!!!) consecutive quarters of year-over-year decline before recovering moving towards recovery with a small but notable growth of 1.2 percent in the October – December 2023 timeframe.
This gives everyone fairly realistic hope that shipments will rise significantly throughout 2024, which could benefit all of China’s top five smartphone vendors, as well as Huawei and “other” companies that actually boosted their (combined) numbers in 2023p
